“Humanizing Application Building” by Mel Conway [pdf]

This is the Conway of Conway's Law, who also did some of the earliest work on recursive descent parsers.

http://www.melconway.com/Home/Inventor.html

Interesting research, in my opinion, this been long coming as the next phase in the evolution of computing and society in general. It's how tech is going change the world to the point of 24/7 always-on connectivity; once the tools, applications, and entire ecosystem is created with more consideration to the human element of the system.

We're actually applying to YC's Summer 2016 batch with a fully automated application deployment process to accommodate for developers, by shifting focus to deployment considerations that have not been eliminated.

To whom it might interest: I've written about how this applies to deployment in some detail here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iU4Qez-EjHTz6o5IUVa8l18n... any additional thoughts on the subject would be appreciated.

This paper presents concepts for building interactive applications, from philosophical to concrete implementation. I read it several times, and will read it again, because there are some unique insights that helped me understand my work in a new way.

One idea I liked was viewing the user/developer as an artisan.

He emphasizes the importance of tools that provide immediate feedback, to give the illusion that the user is working directly on the object he is building; utilize hand-eye-brain coordiantion (visual builders, WYSIWYG editor..)

This reminded me of developing with file watch/build/live-reload, where a live application is evolving as I write the code. As he puts it:

"in-place transformation of the working material: a single always-working application being gradually transformed from its initial to its final form"

That's agile.

Later in the paper, he describes an application model with components and "unidirectional flow". I don't know when this was written, but it's interesting how this paradigm is gaining wide acceptance these days.