PROGRAMMERS TO TELL USERS THEIR SECRETS

Nardi, Bonnie A. A small matter of programming: Perpectives on end user computing. MIT Press, 1993.

To illustrate the gulf between programmers and users Bonnie Nardi contrasts an actual user with a graffito at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The programmer proclaimed, "I would rathcr write programs to help me write programs than write program." Thc user said, 'I didn't have much time so I did it the long way." Nardi's position fits neatly between the two. She argues that programmers should write programs to help users write programs. She acknowledges that the learning curve for traditional progrmming lanuages is too long. But she is convinced that "end-users will freely write their own applications when they have task-specific pro- gramming languaes embedded in appropriate visual frameworks and they will write applications in collaboration with other users.''

Her book develops each element in this conclusion in a succinct and orderly argument backed by a thorough but not oppressive review of the literature. Thc biblioraphy runs to tweleve-and-a-half pages while the text with illustrations covers only 136 pages.

She starts by dismissing thc idea of humans having converational interaction wjth computers and proceeds instead from the observation that people are happy to embrace formal languages when they are relevant and efficient.

Score sheets for baseball (or, indeed, cricket) fall into this category along with spreadsheet and computer-aided design systems. These have appropriate and not needlessly icon cluttered visual frameworks. This is not to say they are visual programming languages, which Nardi considers carcfully before rejection. "Somctimes. she notes, "a few word are worth a thousand pictures. She finishes with a description of Hewlett-Pack- rd's Appliction Construction Environment as an example of a system which seeks to leverage users' skills and interests'' in performing the particular jobs in which they are expert instead of emphasising users' deficiencies to be remedied."

Nardi was at Hewlett-Packard and is now a senior scientist at Apple's Advanced Tcchnolgy Group. Her stimulating book suggests Apple still has a smouldering remnant of the original rcvolutionary fervour of giving computing power to the people. Long live the revolution.

J. Green-Armytage

Computer Weekly Review, October 27, 1994

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