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psf@psf@oldbytes.space

Synths, retrocomputing, space, books.

This is my main tech-focused account.  If you just want to see my music posts you may want to follow my sonomu account instead.

Music alt: @psf@sonomu.club
Joined: 2026-08-05 23:14:14
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psf@psf@oldbytes.space (2026-08-05 16:31:00)
In their article "Malleable Software", Ink & Switch list various ways that modern software applications fail to serve the user:

Software is too rigid: users can’t tailor it to suit their workflow, except by entering the role of programmers.
Software applications are overspecialized "avocado slicers", not general tools like "knives", so their lack of tailorability is keenly felt.
Software doesn’t provide a reasonable learning curve from beginner to expert; in other words, time spent learning an application doesn’t unlock tailorability, instead the end user must learn an unrelated skill like a markup/scripting language or even the tool’s implementation language.
Software applications are increasingly siloed, so sharing data between apps, let alone orchestrating cross-app workflows, is overly difficult.
These are real problems.  From what I can tell, Ink & Switch are software researchers, and view the problems from a highly technical perspective, focusing on novel infrastructure that enables end-user programmability.  They pose questions such as "how do we ease users into programming?" and  "instead of shipping a dead, static binary, can we ship a living image containing programming tools allowing it to be modified in arbitrary ways while still running?" These ideas are technologically exquisite, but they fail to provide a gentle learning curve.

(cont'd) 🧵