Commentary on the Designer of a LanguageMay 19, 2006
I had an interesting conversation with Graham last week about design. He's spent four years in a design program at York/Sheridan, and he's in the midst of figuring out what to do with that degree. One point that I made is that design is in everything around us -- there is almost no job on earth that doesn't involve aspects of design. It's too bad that there weren't designers looking over our shoulders as us non-designers do our jobs. There would be lots of times when they'd be able to point us in a better direction. Next my mind turned to the task of designing a programming language. It would be interesting to line up the people who have designed the world's major programming languages: C, C++, Java, Perl, etc. Who were they? How did they think? Were they mathematical? Engineers? Artistic? Linguistic? Were they designers? (In a practical sense, yes, but in a professional sense probably not)
I feel like a programming language, while very mathimatical, logical, engineering-minded, obviously linguistic, is also an interesting application for design. Professional designers are friends of simplicity, intuitiveness, asthetics, conciceness, beauty... those are all things I'd want in a programming language.
From this standpoint, it's interesting to consider that the web is pulling computer people towards design and designers towards computers, since web page layout is such an important aspect of the web. I wonder whether these more design-conscious computer people will help to bring forth some really intuitive, asthetically pleasing, beautiful, computer languages.
Counting: A motivational techniqueApril 11, 2006
Rememeber when you were a kid and your mom or dad said
"Jimmy, you have three seconds to stop doing that or you're in big trouble! 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...". More than the threat, the sense of urgency that this gave you might have helped you to stop doing whatever it was that you were doing. But this thinking doesn't only work on kids, I have found, it is also a good trick to motivate ones self. For example, say you're in the shower and you can't bring yourself to turn the water off... it's easy for five or ten minutes to go by and yet still, it's oh so hard. Try counting down from ten or fifteen. It's pretty easy to start the counting process because there is no immediate consequence, but once you get down to about four, you've been sufficiently prepared to endure the water being turned off.
Sometimes I take this further by giving myself a countdown from 10 to wash my hair, from 15 to wash my body, and then from 20 to bask in the warmth before the water goes bye-bye. Now that's an efficient shower!
Music and the human brainApril 10, 2006
It struck me today that the human brain seems wired intellectually and emotionally to appreciate music -- melody, harmony, and rythm. When I'm sitting listening to say a pianist and saxaphonist playing together and it's stirring my emotions, I have to wonder what the evolutionist says about where this came from.
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