Understanding Nothing

The economic corollary, cleverly exploited by Billy Beane, was that players who walked more often were being systematically undervalued by the market and could be had more cheaply. Software development has an equivalent to the base on balls: a module that doesn’t have to be written new because it already exists and can be reused.

We know that the best coders are far more productive than the norm. Arguably, that variance might lie in the patience, discipline, and research skills required to recycle rather than to reinvent. If so, finding ways to measure and value these qualities could yield a pivotal advantage.

– Jon Udell

This morning we were flicking through some 1923 issues of The Magnet, marvelling at their “Wireless Dictionary for Boys”, and all the ads for stopping blushing and stammering, curing baldness and growing two to five inches.

We were also rather perturbed to discover a ad for postage stamps offering example stamps from several countries we’d never heard of: notably Polish Silesia, Haute Volta, and Travancore, Schlezvig (along with a slight doubletake at Belgian Germany).

A little googling revealed that Silesia has been split both as Upper and Lower Silesia, and also as Polish and Czech Silesia, and has been reapportioned numerous time – notably after the two World Wars.

Haute Volta was another name for Upper Volta, which became independent in 1960, and changed its name to Burkina Faso in 1984.

Travancore (aka British India), was a princely state in southwest India, until Indian independence, when it was merged with Cochin and areas of the former Madras state to form a new state, Kerala.

Schlezvig, is a little more difficult to find information about. It may be something to do with Demark, but it’s hard to tell, as most of the information about it seems to be in German…

We describe extensions to the Excel spreadsheet that integrate user-defined functions into the spreadsheet grid, rather than treating them as a “bolt-on”. Our case study is unusual in that it highlights the way that programming language insights can be applied to a product not normally considered as a programming language.

Even more unusual, our design is ruthlessly driven by principles of user-centred design developed by the HCI community, extending them to programming language design. Unlike other programming language research that focuses on usability, our project involves the evolution of the design of a well-established language, which raises compatibility with previous versions as a major issue, but also gives us access to a user base who are able to offer feedback in the user-centred design process.

In this paper we present our extensions and the HCI design principles that lead to our design choices.

– Microsoft Research