azhenley

Passive voice is considered bad and gets annoying to read ("GitHub was searched"). "We" is common regardless of the number of authors, though theses are a bit odd in that the work is often collaborative but the document is solo authored.

Just say what you did. "We searched GitHub."

I had some research grants to investigate these "inquisitive interfaces".

Blog post on the initial idea: An inquisitive code editor: Overcome bugs before you know you have them https://austinhenley.com/blog/inquisitivecodeeditor.html

Grant proposal on the bigger idea: Inquisitive Programming Environments as Learning Environments for Novices and Experts https://austinhenley.com/pubs/Henley2021NSFCAREER.pdf

Check out my blog series, "Challenging projects every programmer should try". Who knows, maybe I will turn it into a book that shows how to implement each project :)

https://austinhenley.com/blog/challengingprojects.html

Write and create educational content.

I really enjoyed reading about Austral, though it is still really early, that was discussed on HN this week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34168452

I was just thinking the same thing!

I think I use writing as an excuse to procrastinate, so this coming year my goal is to release useful products rather than blog posts.

I’ve really missed his blog. I read his posts over and over during grad school.

His story of pivoting from PL research to medical research (and being a star in the field) is quite motivating.

What I did: (1) start a blog, (2) force yourself to write at a specific frequency at all costs, like once a month, (3) plan and schedule future writing topics and times, (4) be very intentional with each sentence and paragraph, and (5) start with an outline for each post and iterate on it before filling in with details.

#5 feels like a superpower to me. It has made writing so much easier. It forces me to really understand (and to realize what I don’t understand) about the topic.

I had a lot of fun whipping up plug-ins within minutes for Atom! It let me try out ideas very quickly.

What are the opportunities for deep CS research applied to climate? E.g., compilers, databases, program synthesis, and LLMs?

The discussion about Chris from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33893120

His dissertation about Ruby: https://chrisseaton.com/phd/specialising-ruby.pdf

I really, really like the "wet putty" look as well as matte finishes. No more gloss please.

Yep: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33875545

“Writing is thinking”

We actually published a research paper recently on COBOL communities, but I still don't have a great answer to your question.

Much of the information is locked away in developers' heads and it was difficult for us to find many resources on getting started with COBOL. In fact, most of the COBOL code on GitHub is homework assignments but almost no real-world programs that we could analyze.

Our paper which contributes a defects benchmark: https://austinhenley.com/pubs/Lee2022ICSME_COBOL.pdf

Kite rejected me for a position years ago which motivated me to go raise $1M from the NSF to research AI-based dev tools before I moved on to Microsoft.

They seemed like a really cool team, I wish them the best.

At my first internship I built a program that generated reports with a ranking of call center agents based on their daily time on the phone and calls taken. It was used to fire the bottom X% periodically.

Not nefarious, but wasn’t how I want to spend my energy.

It looks like a BASIC. Are there any benefits over other educational/games-oriented BASICs?

How does it compare to educational languages, like Hedy?

https://www.hedycode.com

How does this compare to something like https://www.helpgidget.org/ ? I used to teach middle schoolers using it. Right off the bat Pickcode seems less kid-oriented.

If you are new to HCI, I recently wrote a blog post about applying HCI methods to your work. I also list some further reading at the end.

My HCI toolbox: Methods for designing and evaluating UIs https://austinhenley.com/blog/myhcitoolbox.html

None of the blogs are loading for me. Just spins.

The console is showing several 500 errors.

My favorite normal lens is a Helios 44m-2 58mm f2. It is an old Russian knock off that produces a swirly background and glow effect. I bought two on eBay 8 years ago for maybe $30 each and connect it to my mirrorless body with a $9 adapter.

Of course they do, but I get what you mean. I've even written a few articles about my thoughts against this mentality:

Why I prefer making useless stuff https://austinhenley.com/blog/makinguselessstuff.html

Programming as play https://austinhenley.com/blog/programmingasplay.html

I originally tried organizing my intro to software engineering course around the SWEBOK, and I must say it felt really, really dated and not all that useful.

The Design of Everyday Things.

It really changed how I view software (or any product) as just a tool to help people.

How does this compare to https://www.plasmic.app/ ?

It seems to have a similar goal of allowing product and marketing teams to update web pages with little to no code.

I’ve always wanted to setup a nonprofit to give motivated people a grant (not investment!) that enables them to build an app/product. Like maybe someone who didn’t go to college but wants an opportunity to build a product.

How hard is it to set this up? The process to start a nonprofit doesn’t seem inviting.

Interesting pivot. They used to call themselves a "non-profit distributed AI research lab" that gave small chunks of cash to AI researchers. Now they've changed to much larger investments for products/startups.

See their HN announcement 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14851806