Use data: u·r·i’s for branding

[Blog] / 2023-12-17 / programming_resolutions_24 / #entry.rdf

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        <dc11:title>Programming Resolutions for 2024</dc11:title>
        <dc11:date>2023-12-17T23:48:33-05:00</dc11:date>
        <dc11:abstract rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
A set of resolutions for the upcoming year which I think are important
  to ensure that the output of the work that I do is humane, use·ful,
  and generally in·line with my ethical and esthetic sensibilities.
Many of these stand in sharp contrast to current trends within
  computing, and the resolutions would hardly be meaningful otherwise.
]]></dc11:abstract>
        <sioc:content rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
The following are a set of resolutions for the upcoming year which I
  think are important to ensure that the output of the work that I do
  is humane, use·ful, and generally in·line with my ethical and
  esthetic sensibilities.
(I some·times use the spelling <i>prrgrrmmng</i> to distinguish
  programming of this form from other kinds.)
Many of them stand in sharp contrast to current trends within
  computing, and the resolutions would hardly be meaningful otherwise.

It is also worth noting that many of these are things that I am already
  doing, but I’m recording them here in the hopes that others might
  find them use·ful as well.

## Resolution ①: Commit to Unix Philosophy

This resolution comes first because it is foundational to the approach
  I take with software projects.
Different people have different understandings of what “Unix
  philosophy” means, so I want to be clear about it here :⁠—

01. **Programs should be scoped as tightly as possible;** they should
      do as few things as possible while still providing the necessary
      flexibility for complex operations.

02. **Programs should read from `stdin` and write to `stdout`.**
    How this happens may be adjusted with commandline flags, but the
      vast majority of information should be provided in‐band through
      `stdin`/`stdout`/`stderr` and not through some other mechanism.

03. **The input and output of programs should follow common conventions
      and standards,** so that both are easy for other programs to
      replicate and process.

04. **Programs should be built to combine with other programs** in ways
      that significantly increase their potential.

05. **Programs which aren’t broken should not be fixed.**
    Instead, new programs should be written which provide missing
      features.

What Unix philosophy brings to the table, to my eye, is really _a
  different mindset around dependency management_.
In contemporary programming, dependency management is typically thought
  of in terms of Semver‐versioned package sources and a package manager
  which resolves them appropriately.
These packages are then included in the project which makes use of
  them.

Under the Unix philosophy, in contrast, dependencies come not in the
  form of packages but a·p·i’s.
This means :⁠—

- **The burden is on users to provide programs** which support the
    necessary a·p·i’s, but in contrast, **any program which supports
    the necessary a·p·i’s can be used** (e·g Free·B·S·D _or_ F·S·F).

- **Dependencies are replace·able piece·meal** as new versions come
    along, and conversely, **dependencies which “just work” can remain
    in place** for years.

- **Newer programs and implementations can be easily turned into a
    replacement for older programs and implementations** by just
    applying appropriate transforms on the input and output (and,
    potentially, vice·versa).

- Instead of needing to manage one dependency tree for programs
    written in Ruby and another for programs written in Swift, **the
    same dependency can be used in all applications across languages,**
    because all languages provide the ability to read from `stdin` and
    write to `stdout`.

I don’t want to criticize package managers too harshly, but I don’t
  think that language‐specific package managers are a good solution for
  personal computing, and I don’t think learning five different a·p·i’s
  across five different programming languages is helping any·one.
People writing personal scripts or doing highly‐individualized
  computing cannot afford to constantly be interfacing with package
  managers to ensure that every one of the dependencies for every one
  of their scripts is up·to·date.
**Make small, reliable programs with common interfaces that any·one can
  use,** and **depend on existing a·p·i’s with multiple
  implementations,** not strictly‐versioned, single‐language packages
  where possible.

## Resolution ②: Commit, Also, to the Web

The Unix philosophy works well for programs being run on one’s own
  personal computer, but it doesn’t necessarily map well to networked
  technologies over the internet.
For these, thankfully, we have the [philosophy of the
  Web][WEBARCH] :⁠—

01. **The Web is a network of _resources_, named via _global
      identifiers_ and accessible via _U·R·L’s_.**

    - The global identifiers should have the form of I·R·I’s and,
        ideally, should be persistent and unique across space and time.

    - U·R·L’s and I·R·I’s should be human‐readable and transcribable,
        but should not encode unnecessary information or information
        which is liable to change.

    - U·R·L’s should not change unnecessarily.
      When they do change, having separate, persistent identifiers
        helps to rediscover the resource at its new location.

02. **Resources should be retrievable in common formats using common
      protocols.**

    - Common formats include H·T·M·L, X·M·L, and Json.
      Specialized forms of resource may allow other formats, for
        example N·Triples or Turtle for metadata resources, in line
        with community practice.

    - Plain, stateless H·T·T·P(·S) requests should be used to access
        resources when·ever possible.

03. **Resources should be designed in a way so as to maximize their
      utility to the person accessing it.**
    They should be readable and processable without any specialized
      tools.
    They should conform to community standards for information
      representation.

04. **Resources should link to other, related resources by U·R·L.**
    Put together, linking, common formats and protocols, and U·R·L’s
      provide a similar level of functionality to that of reading and
      writing from standard input in Unix.
    They enable the creation of complex user‐agents which operate by
      processing and combining a number of simpler resources.

**Follow web philosophy whenever publishing documents or data.**
This is often the easiest, and most boring, solution to online
  publishing.
**[Be boring.][CPM]**
**Shift the focus from making interesting protocols to making
  interesting _tools_** which _use_ those protocols.

## Resolution ③: Write for the Future

If what was popular in technology never changed, it would mean that
  technology culture had reached a stale·mate, which would probably be
  a bad thing.
Instead, **assume that what is popular today may not be popular
  tomorrow.**
This probably means that popularity is not actually a very good
  indicator of which technology a person should use, unless that person
  is very committed to redoing all of their work every five‐or‐so
  years.

Popular technologies change, but old data remains, and if one wants
  that data to remain accessible and useful, that means one needs to
  construct it in such a way so as to not break in the absence of the
  current technological fads.
**Use formats which can be analysed with tools that are proven to be
  durable,** and converted from there to more contemporary formats as
  necessary.
**Write programs which can be run in the absence of current
  technological infrastructure,** for example specific iterations of a
  particular package manager or versioning scheme.

If everything new eventually becomes old, then in five years it will
  not matter whether a program was written using new technologies or
  not.
However, what _will_ matter is whether the program still runs and is
  useful.
**Use that perspective as a baseline** when making decisions regarding
  program architecture and a·p·i.
Contemporary problems will persist for as long as there is
  contemporaneous data, so **build solutions for contemporary problems
  and contemporary data which can persist alongside them.**

## Resolution ④: Capture the Current Moment

A good program might remain useful for many years.
That makes programs, in a sense, transmitters of history (a fact which
  any·one who has ever read the phrase <i>for historical reasons</i>
  knows well).
How·ever, programs rarely bother to encode their _social_ history
  alongside the technical.

I think this is a loss of radical potential, but also a loss of a
  chance to invest in programs as a site of human connection and
  understanding.
For all of history, humans have decorated the tools they use with
  symbols and meaning; tools are in fact, generally, an important part
  of material culture.
But despite this, computer tools have typically only been decorated in
  the most banal of ways (branding).
The _internals_ of programs (their structures, variable names, source
  code comments) could be records of much more than just a dry series
  of technical decisions—if we were willing to invest in them as
  social objects and not merely objects of science.

**Don’t write “timeless” programs, write programs which can be
  understood in any time** because they encode the human
  particularities of living in the world in the year and place in which
  they were written.
**View programs as instances of instrumental culture** which _not only
  might be decorated_ (the same as one might carve an image into a
  bench, or embroider a picture onto a pillow) but whose _very
  construction is social_ (akin to choosing fabric patterns and designs
  for a quilt).
**Recognize these aspects of programs as not merely “esthetic”, but
  also conveyors of historical, cultural, or political meaning;**
  endow them with symbols accordingly.

## Resolution ⑤: Compute Less, Transform More

There are times when computers actually need to do computing.
But much of the time, computers are used simply to access and present
  data.
If data is accessible in form $A and simply needs to be presented in
  form $B, this is a problem of _data transformation_ not a problem of
  _computing_ per·se.

Json is a good data structure for accessing information for computing
  but it is a bad data structure for accessing information with the
  intent to transform it into something human‐readable.
X·M·L and s·expressions, on the other hand, are trivially
  transformable, and X·M·L in particular is home to a variety of
  human‐friendly destination formats.
Consequenty, for data which is intended for human consumption, **use
  X·M·L, or use a language with a straightforward transformation into
  X·M·L.**
**Do not use bespoke Json syntaxes** which require specialized tools
  to process or display.
**Do not use abbreviated, context‐specific formats** which are easily
  separated from the contexts needed to interpret them correctly.

**Assume all data is intended for human consumption** because all
  programs should be written by humans and for the benefit of humans.
**Always have a plan for formatting data** in a human‐readable manner.

## Resolution ⑥: Collaborate Socially or Not at All

Much of the current open‐source tech world is currently focused on the
  problem of how to drop the social barrier for software collaboration
  to be as low as possible.
Personally, I think that asocial collaboration leads to asocial
  software.
And in my experience, [typically these sorts of “open” projects are in
  fact entirely closed][TYRANNY] to ideas and contributions which do
  not align with their pre·existing agendas, because there is no social
  structure by which needs can be negotiated or meaningful pressure
  applied.

**_Require_ social interaction** for collaboration with one’s software.
**Make it clear from the outset who is responsible** for addressing
  public concerns, and **require that the public address _that person_
  or _those people_** specifically.
**Have communication channels** for frequent collaborators, and **put
  those channels in a place where those collaborators feel welcome**
  and able to contribute.
**Have an onramp** for interested persons to get more involved;
  **invite people who give a shit** to give a shit formally.

**Don’t use faceless ticketing platforms** where strangers shout into
  the void in the hopes that some·one with power will see their post
  and agree.
**Don’t erase power differences** between maintainers, leads,
  collaborators, and the general public.
**Stop participating in spaces** which don’t know how to manage their
  communities or don’t perceive themselves as having communities _to_
  manage.
**Make a hard exit** when projects respond to suggestions only with
  opinions, and never questions.

## Conclusion

Obviously, the resolutions in this post are probably impossible to
  fully implement with every program I work on or every line of code I
  make—especially when those programs or code are being written within
  constraints set by somebody else.
However, I think they are a useful aspiration and yardstick against
  which to measure the things I make.
These yardsticks are use·ful, of course, as people who make things and
  want to make things better.
If you also write computer programs, I’d be interested in hearing how
  yours compare.

[CPM]: <https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2021/11/12/continuous/> "Continuous Partial Mythologies"
[TYRANNY]: <https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm> "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
[WEBARCH]: <https://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/> "Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One"
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        <dc11:rights rdf:parseType="Markdown"><![CDATA[
Copyright © 2023
<a href="https://www.ladys.computer/about/#lady">Lady</a>
<small>[Prrgrrmmrr; Grrl]</small>.
Some rights reserved.

This blogpost is licensed under a <a rel="license"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><cite>Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</cite></a>.
]]></dc11:rights>
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