Yesterday my mother-in-law inquired, after watching me do something on her computer, how I learned all this. All I could say was that well, I’ve been using Macs since the 80’s.
For me it’s second nature to do all this, but for most people it’s not. We have to remember this when designing software.
At first I didn’t understand why some software developers are excited about AI code generation. If the stated goal is to make them obsolete and take away their very livelihood, why are they all for it?
Take authors, people who write books for a living. Should they be excited that an LLM can write an entire novel faster and more automatically than they can? No way. The act of creation, of sharing their humanity and lived experience is central to authoring books. Without that careful crafting of the words, there is no outlet anymore.
So what’s the difference? Me, I’ve always seen writing code as similar to authoring words. Coding is writing. It’s an act of creation, of crafting abstract ideas into a consistent whole that other people find useful. It’s a manifestation of the fact that I was here and I produced a collection of words that mean something.
And thinking about this, I’ve come to the overly simplified theory that there are broadly two kinds of software developers: those who like the art of writing code, and those who see it as an obstacle. The former are in this profession for the love of designing and building and tweaking and solving puzzles until they get everything right. The latter are more interested in the result, in the fact that software can exist one moment when it didn’t before, and they have less regard for how it got made.
So given the choice, would I prefer to use software made by people who used every shortcut possible to get a product they can profit from? Or by people who love the craft of designing and coding and solving human problems?
The latter, hands down.
One of the fundamental issues with AI is just that, the name “AI”.
That cannot be understated. This technology is not artificial intelligence, and word choice matters. I cannot stress it enough. We would all have more meaningful discussions about its possible uses if we had another name for it that’s not so loaded.
I went into software development because I like writing code and making abstract concepts come to life. Coding is insanely fun. Why would I want something to generate it for me?
Netflix, in their infinite wisdom, decided to overhaul their UI. Now only the right half of the screen scrolls, so I have that much less space to scan for something to watch. It’s also an added cognitive load to decode the relationship between what’s scrolling on the right and what’s selected on the left. ♂️
So I switched right over to Plex to look there for something to watch instead.
Some days, telling people that I have MS feels overly dramatic, yet at other times it feels like not enough. It’s a weird process to accept that this is me now yet I find myself reassuring people that I’m fine.
I find that I like reading how other people experience this transition.
I like what Joshua Jackson said on CBC’s Q a couple months ago about being Canadian:
For all of the things that Americans like to make fun of us for, I think are positives.
I think it is good that we’re kind and polite people.
I think that it is good that we have socialized medicine and think it’s important to take care of our neighbors.
I think that it’s good that we have decent public education for our children.
I think it’s good that we care about the health of our air and water and the preservation of our natural resources.
I think it’s good that we think that our country is better for having waves of immigrants who can be wherever they are from and also Canadian at the same time and those two things are not mutually exclusive.
I think that it is good that we want to be good citizens in the world.
I think that it is good that we’re able to admit when we are wrong.
I think that it is good for us to look at the sins of our own past and try to make redress with, say, the First Nations which we are still in the process to do properly.
These are good things. And these make be proud to be Canadian.
I’ve been a designer and a developer since the 90’s. I’ve been using Apple devices since not long after the original Macintosh came out in the mid 80’s. I’ve always been an early installer of new OS releases.
For the first time in my life, I will skip the next major OS releases because of the misguided UI changes that Apple is pushing on all of us.
On a weekly basis, there are many things I wish for my Apple devices. A new UI paradigm is not on that list.
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Three months ago I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
It started last year when my tongue was feeling tingly. Initially I chalked it up to probably having burned my tongue eating or drinking something hot that I couldn’t remember. After a few days of it not going away, half of my face went gradually numb. At first they thought I might be having a stroke but tests were coming back negative. The ER doctor said, “The first thing to rule out is a stroke. After that the second path of investigation would be MS.” It took a lot more tests and doctors over many months to get the confirmation, but that good ER doctor totally called it that day.
Realizing that I am the bearer of a lifelong, currently incurable disease is an odd place to be. It’s not something you ever expect or wish to happen, obviously, and finding myself there is a slightly unsettling change in perspective. I’ve always been generally healthy. I’ve always been the one supporting others around me. It’s not just that I did support others, but that I also saw myself that way. For my entire adult life, that was my role. I defined myself as, and struggled with, putting the people I love first. Now it’s not so clearcut anymore. It’s still early in the disease, but I have to come to terms with the fact that I will eventually, and from time to time, need my family, friends, and colleagues to understand and support me.
During the investigation prior to the diagnosis, I told myself that I would just keep living my life and not let the disease define me. No matter what happens, I would keep rowing. That’s me. I’m good at that.
But since the diagnosis was made official, it’s been a harder realization. And it’s been difficult to understand what “define me” means. What is it that defines us, is it what we believe deep in our hearts and in our minds? Or is it what we project about ourselves, what we say, what we write, what we divulge? Those two things are not always aligned. Some things we believe but we prefer to keep to ourselves, especially in this privacy-challenged world where revealing too much can be problematic, if not dangerous.
I still don’t want to let MS define me. At least not yet since it’s so early. For now my disease is mostly invisible. People don’t know I have it unless I tell them, and even if they do, they don’t seem to know what to say, so keeping quiet about it is relatively easy.
I was afraid that saying online that I have MS was going to define me. But after thinking about it for three months, I’ve decided that what defines me is my outlook. It’s the way I see the world. What defines me is how I choose to react in the face of adversity. And that’s something I can share with you. I’ve benefited so much from reading other people’s personal experiences over the years. It’s one reason why I love blogging. It’s also why I loved Rebecca Saltzman’s Family Tours in the Kingdom of the Sick. Writing this, for me, is a way to give back. And if what I share ends up helping even just one person out there, then it will be a continuation of me supporting others, which is what defines me.
I can’t complain. My only symptoms so far have been sensory: numbness, tingling, touch sensitivity. My skin sometimes feels wet when it’s not, and most often like it’s burning. I’m lucky that I don’t have, at least not yet, debilitating symptoms such as balance issues or loss of vision. Even if MS is still incurable, I consider myself lucky to be diagnosed at a time when there are many treatment options available. One person close to me was diagnosed 35 years ago. It feels unfair and humbling that I have access to treatments that were developed through the trials and suffering of so many others before me. All one can do is marvel at the progress that’s been made and honour their contributions by trying to live well.
Because my symptoms have so far been invisible, I find myself feeling lonely at times. I struggle with telling people I’m not feeling well. Most of the time it’s not painful, but it’s still uncomfortable. The sensations that affect me are difficult to explain. Even if I find words that seem accurate to how I feel, I imagine that others won’t relate to them. First-hand experience is kind of a prerequisite for understanding why it doesn’t feel good. I get excited when I read someone in the MS subreddit describe their sensations. But I don’t feel that way when talking with family and friends. I often find myself having to re-explain what I’m experiencing, and trying not to correct people when they bring it up inaccurately. That’s OK, it is what it is and nobody’s fault. By default, disease is isolating. For everybody.
It is strange to think that my brain has lesions that are causing these changes in me. They’re right there, so close under my skull, tiny and only visible to very specialized equipment. Can’t they just be removed or cleaned up somehow? I’m a software engineer; can’t the bug be fixed? I keep thinking of Star Trek. In sci-fi stories, they consider 21st century medicine barbaric, and they always have pods that can heal just about anything.
The good thing that came from all this is that it explained sensations that I had been experiencing for years. For a while I hadn’t been feeling 100% and it was difficult to explain how. It shed light on why parts of my body felt strangely sensitive. I think of odd transient pains I’ve experienced that puzzled me. I incredulously used to worry that I was getting old already.
So now I know it’s just that my brain was slowly getting damaged by my own immune system. It’s been in my head the whole time! My family was relieved to see that I haven’t lost my sense of humour.
Call me old-fashioned, but when something breaks I just pay for the repair or buy a new one.
By my math, the few times I’ve had to pay for repair amounts to a lot less than what I would’ve paid on extended warranties.
À propos of nothing, I was reminded today that some of the most fun I’ve had programming was when I made apps in REALbasic, now Xojo. You rarely hear about it but it’s a very productive environment.
Among other things, back in the day I rewrote the 4-Sight Fax client, which let people send and receive faxes at their computer as easily as email, going from about 100k lines of Java code to 30k in REALbasic.
Why is your tech life filled with things you don’t want? Why do you feel like you’re not smart enough or too old to understand your devices?
Why do ads take up more space on web sites you visit than the actual content? Why do ads show up in desktop and mobile applications, even ones that you are already paying for? Why do you get ads in Apple’s system settings and wallet apps?
Why are notifications so pervasive across all of your devices? Why are they on by default? Why does it require skill and time for you to find and enable only the ones you actually need?
Why are you bombarded with a constant stream of aggressive solicitation, through email, web sites, apps, phone calls, text, video? Why does it seems like every device you own is pitching you something every day?
Why is your TV watching you? Why is your washer and dryer connected to the Internet? Why does everything you own seem to have a mind of its own?
Why does every business you contact and every service you use want you to tell them “how they did” mere hours after the fact? Yet why does it take “two weeks or longer” to unsubscribe from most things?
The answer to all of the above is the same: It wasn’t made for you.
No matter what most companies say, products today are just not made for you. If they were, the questions above wouldn’t need asking and they wouldn’t even exist. It wasn’t made for you, it’s that simple.
My mom asks me all the time why is her iPad not working in a way that she can understand. Sometimes she tells me that it’s her fault, that she’s not good with these things And I tell her: it’s not you, it just wasn’t built and designed and thought out for you.
I work in tech, and I struggle with it too, so it’s not you. It’s not your age. It’s not your education. It’s not that your instincts are wrong. No, it’s that these products are built without thought and regard to what your actual needs are and how best to fulfill those needs. Yes it used to be that way, no it’s not anymore.
Products are no longer built to meet you and your needs where you are. Instead, products today ask you to bend yourself to the reality and assumptions of their maker. You have to meet them where they are and on their terms. It’s not about you anymore, it’s about them.
Why is your software constantly changing and forcing you to learn new things and adapt to it?
All pretenses have dropped. It just wasn’t made for you.
I haven’t even installed one of the betas and, just seeing the comments and screen shots online, I’m appalled at what’s going on at Apple.
I’ve been disenchanted for a while. So many things don’t work on an almost daily basis. My family is constantly asking me to look into problems they have with their Apple devices.
Instead of polishing until it’s flawless, it’s a yearly barrage of more crap. New software design for the sake of cool, but hardware design has been stagnant and boring for years. This is a company that used to make fun of beige boxes.
We are witnessing in real time the demise of a company that brought us so much joy in the past. Sad and frustrating.
I keep running into situations with my Apple devices that make me think nobody with decisional power at Apple lives in the same dimension as I do.
Apparently in their dimension, nobody they know ever dies so there’s no need to enter death dates into Contacts to stop Calendar from celebrating someone’s birthday.
In their world, the neighbours live far enough that there is never interference and the Apple TV remote never ever randomly stops working for 20 seconds at a time.
At Apple, everybody has multiple pointing devices lying around everywhere so it’s no problem at all for the mouse USB port to be located where that makes it unusable during charge.
Beings that dwell at Apple don’t have elderly relatives so you see they never need to control someone’s iPad remotely to perform any maintenance task at all.
Speaking of mobile devices, everyone in Cupertino also has a computer so if an iOS update can’t install for lack of space, this can always be worked around by updating via a computer, you know.
While we’re on the topic of the English language, the e, i, and u in these words are all pronounced the same: transfer, firm, fur. Sometimes the o in “for” also goes on that list.
No wonder my anglophone wife has trouble with vowels when speaking French.
As a natively French speaker, “over the counter“ doesn’t make sense to me. Over the counter from whose perspective? Are we talking about the action of handing something over the counter or the placement? Depending on the answer to these questions, it could mean either prescription or non-prescription medication. So much easier to call them what they are.
I found many similarities with my way of seeing and worrying about “AI”, whatever that word means nowadays, in this piece by Joel Hladecek. And his conclusion is an interest possibility. I hope he’s right.
The trial of the five hockey players accused of sexually assaulting a woman has been in the news and I find that my reaction to every such trial is now frustration.
Frustration that any bit of inconsistency or unclear logic in her testimony is examined and undermined as though every victim always acts consistently and logically.
Frustration that she is suspected of having an ulterior motive, as though there are things that are worth going through this kind of scrutiny and pain.
Frustration before even knowing the verdict, because most of the time, the victims are doubted while the accused get to walk.
I like iMessage for its ubiquity, but not for its Messages UI. It’s ground zero for how to make features undiscoverable. Wanna react? No button. Wanna start a thread? No discernable UI. Wanna see a message time? No visible option.
This is an area where we would all benefit from the competition and choice if there somehow was an API that third-party developers could use.
À propos of the Apple Intelligence vaporware, I’m actually happy about it and much more worried that Apple has been gradually losing its edge on software for years. Increasingly poor UX, spontaneous setting changes, Apple product promotion throughout the OS, worsening developer relations, bugs that never get fixed. That is the story.
Back in the day when I used to listen to podcasts regularly, I listened to this particular talk about the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester more times than I care to admit. I’m glad I found it on YouTube. A good mix of history and humour.
My tech tinkering nowadays is filled with figuring out things that don’t work because of all the ways we try to make the Internet half decent. A site doesn’t load because of a blocker. A video doesn’t play because of a VPN. A page can’t be read because I block ads. It never ends. Tinkering is no fun anymore.
Something has gotten lost in this escalation. Sure I can view videos on YouTube without ads, but overall the Internet is still a terrible experience.
Today it occurred to me how odd it is that map() functions don’t return a map.
I keep hearing that the Canada-USA game last Saturday at the 4 Nations Face-Off had the best start ever, all because there were three fights in the first 9 seconds of the game.
I’m Canadian and I love hockey, but I for one would love to see fighting banned forever.
That was not hockey, that was disgusting, and that made me ashamed. Such a skillful and amazing sport, tarnished by acts of violence that would get you in a prison cell were they committed anywhere else than a hockey rink.
On a whim I went looking for a PWHL app because the website is underwhelming and, lo and behold one exists for iOS. It’s called PWHL Fan App and was developed by Nick Barfoot. I’m impressed. This “fan app” has every feature under the sun, schedules, scores, play-by-play, stats, notifications, videos, you name it. And it’s free.
You know, I’ve been writing software for a very long time, and I still find excitement at embarking on a new project and coding something new.
I love imagining the abstract boxes in my head, envisioning how they will interact, and translating those ideas into words that the computer understands.
Coding is crazy fun and we get paid to do it. It really is a privilege.
I took my cat to the vet today for her annual checkup. She clearly wasn’t a fan of the adventure, meowing sadly in the car and while being given a shot.
She would have every right to resent what I did and stay away from me tonight. But she’s right here next to me as usual, showing her belly and purring when I pet her.
Unconditional love.
I’ve always felt that WordPress was overkill to run my blog. Thinking about alternatives, there are a lot of static site generators but they all seem to assume or require the use of the command line.
Way back in the day, I used iBlog for Mac, a desktop app that did whatever it needed under the hood to generate files and upload them to .Mac. Is there no such thing anymore?
It would be cool for MarsEdit to support static site generation.
With the snow that fell the other day, I finally got to go for a snow ride with my Radster Trail today. The 3” tires have great traction and that went really well. This summer I tended to feel they were overkill, but in the winter it’s perfect.
I’ve refused to work at big tech companies like Google and Facebook for a long time, and I hope the number of tech companies that other people aspire to work at has shrunk in recent weeks too. I really do.
Life is too short to donate your time and intellectual powers to companies that cater to the dark side.
