Jeff Lindsay 2025-02-05 06:51:35 Good to see people excited about the history of coding as well! I'm hosting a Plan 9 night this Friday if anybody is curious about the forgotten successor to Unix. It's a watch party of curated videos on Plan 9 from Bell Labs, its history and ideas, and possibly some live demos. discord.gg/S2Tabjnw?event=1334589413744840835
Federico Pereiro 2025-02-05 19:19:45 Same thing, but it's because of the timezone (I'm in UTC+1)
Kartik Agaram 2025-02-06 17:12:11 Kartik Agaram 2025-02-06 21:07:29 I don't follow, can you elaborate? Is this about tools or something else potentially more interesting?
Alex Bender 2025-02-06 21:26:32 the Wardley maps. How did you actually started doing that? I know abut this tool/concept for a year approx, but didn't really dived into. It looks promising and interesting but cant find a way to get closer to it
Scott 2025-02-06 21:39:03 Ooh thanks for the reminder! I saw Tudor tweet about this the other day but forgot to bookmark it to check it out
Kartik Agaram 2025-02-06 21:51:38 @Alex Bender Yeah, that's a good point. I first read about Wardley Maps in a corporate context, and whether they're of use there depends a lot on details of the corporate culture, who's trying to drive change, and so on. Politics.
But the muddy picture became much more clear when I started trying to answer supply-chain questions in my personal life. Then abstract "user value" became personal value to myself.
Here's an example map I made for myself, about a question that dominates my thoughts: what software to depend on that will maximize my own agency. I used a janky tool for this, basically just the ability to draw boxes and arrows overlaid on a static background with the 4 columns. I haven't even labeled the columns as you can see. But it helps me see choke points in my supply chain (places where I have to use one specific thing in a row, and I can't choose between multiple alternatives.
Alex Bender 2025-02-06 21:58:34 i really like amount of interesting tools you have and you build
Kartik Agaram 2025-02-06 22:05:09 Thanks so much! Yeah, for me the last couple of years have been a reframing of the Future of Software from "influencing popular culture by writing code" to "using computers to improve my own thinking".
Alex Bender 2025-02-06 22:06:56 looks like it's the bifurcation point where time splits and I'm gonna go by path which explores your tools and projects
Konrad Hinsen 2025-02-07 13:51:10 @Alex Bender That's time well spent. I have been following Kartik Agaram's toolbox for a while, and it has been a great inspiration for me although I don't actually use any of it myself right now (because my priorities and my computational environments are different).
Alex Bender 2025-02-07 13:53:18 Hey Konrad Hinsen, can you share a bit what is you're focusing on please? I remember your name was mentioned in conversation with Ward at Federated Wiki calls but I can't remember the context
Konrad Hinsen 2025-02-07 13:58:44 @Alex Bender My main use for computers is professionally in computational science, but then I tend to use much of the same toolbox for personal information/knowledge management etc. Like Kartik Agaram, I have increasing individual agency high up on my list of priorities. I want simple tools that an individual can understand and adapt with reasonable effort. But since I work professionally with big data, highly structured data, and lengthy computations, plus tons of legacy software I have to interface with, I write for desktop systems (not Web, not cloud, not mobile) and need to keep an eye on efficiency (though not exclusively). Which is how I ended up with Common Lisp as my main environment, after more than 20 years of Python that ended with the observation that today's Python is no longer suited for individuals or small teams if they care about their agency.
I don't remember in which context I was mentioned on Federated Wiki. Maybe it was about my use of Glamorous Toolkit, which is what I'd use for everything if UX were the only criterion to apply.
Alex Bender 2025-02-07 14:01:09 oh, that sounds interesting. I'm in python ecosystem for 12 years already and now I'm looking around with some knowledge. Lisp is very attractive, and smalltalk as well. And lua is on the list as well.
Do you store your knowledge base as wiki system or use something else?
Konrad Hinsen 2025-02-07 14:03:06 The core is an org-roam database in Emacs, which is just a bunch of plain text files. I also have non-Emacs tools to process it, e.g. for exporting to TiddlyWiki for consumption (read-only) on mobile devices.
Konrad Hinsen 2025-02-07 14:04:52 Computational stuff is usually Common Lisp code snippets in the org-roam database that open my moldable inspector. That's the closest I have to "apps".
Naveen Michaud-Agrawal 2025-02-08 20:04:30 Konrad Hinsen I came across your early professional work in python through MMTK (as a former computational biophysicist). Do you use Common Lisp for molecular modeling/analysis now?
Konrad Hinsen 2025-02-09 09:29:38 @Naveen Michaud-Agrawal Not much so far, but I do intend to use Common Lisp for any new tools I work on. I don't rewrite code for the fun of it, meaning that I continue to use MMTK wherever it is applicable, even if I don't intend to work on MMTK itself any more. It works well enough in a Guix-based time capsule.
Tak Tran 2025-02-06 21:27:07 Loving the Gigahand Dreams long form interview podcast atm. Itās a nice intersection between tech/art/education/making, from Jay Silver who is one of the people who created the Makey Makey.
Last interview I watched was with Andy Cavatorta, who makes these big crazy tech art contraptions eg, an instrument for Bjƶrk and a 5 player pinball machine to teach the ideas behind economics.
Some highlights from it:
- āHow to make things you donāt know how to makeā - prototype a lot ! And be relentless about it - __ āprolific prototypingā and ādiscovery orientated designā
- Mouse in a maze types
- The specialist - can run one specific maze, really quickly
- The generalist - has the fortitude to wander many mazes, but not quickly
- The prototyper - can run unfamiliar mazes quickly, solve unfamiliar problems
- Telharmonium
- the first electronic music streaming service made using giant organs and the telephone switch board
- Heās created a curriculum for teaching his prototyping process that he has developed over the years, and takes you through algos, maths, electronics, physics, using making tools and programming - which sounds amazing! Too bad I aināt in NYC though.
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Tak Tran 2025-02-06 21:28:30 (I feel like I found this podcast from someone from the FoC group, but donāt rmb who/whereā¦)