Add Justice's "User-Modifiable Software" to catalog

[jryans]

https://usermodifiable.software/

Examines Smalltalk and HyperCard, and imagines a future of user-modifiable software based on those roots.

Are better solutions possible for when software doesn’t meet its users’ needs? If we look back through the history of computing, there have been several software platforms that allow users to inspect the code of their software and modify it in the same environment the software runs in. It’s not a black box like commercial software, and it doesn’t require a complicated development environment setup like most open-source software. With these software platforms, if you are using the application, you already have all the tooling you need to see how the application works and modify it.

Both systems empower people by removing many technical barriers between users and developers. Modifying your software doesn’t require installing and setting up a complex separate environment and configuring complex build tools. If you are using the system, you have the source for the system and the tools to develop in it. Although there are different user levels in HyperCard, this serves to provide small steps from user to developer: you take gradual steps and eventually find out you’re programming. In Smalltalk, there are no user levels: from the moment you send your first message to an object, you’re doing what all the code in the system does, so it’s all theoretically accessible to you.

There is a slightly different strategy between the two systems: Smalltalk attempts to empower people to learn to program, whereas HyperCard attempts to empower people to create software without learning to program until absolutely necessary.

Related talk by the author at LIVE 2021: Modifiable Software Systems: Smalltalk and HyperCard

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