President Biden does something I thought Democrats forgot how to do. He goes around the obstruction in DC, bringing his ideas to the people. Journalism could learn from this. If they understood and took the side of the people more, they'd have more support from the people.#
I've thought more about Making of Sgt Pepper. It's amazing to hear the Beatles' perspective on the album, I had never really thought how it was created, yet as a creative person myself, I’m often surprised and even offended that people don’t consider my point of view about the things I created. But at one time, Sgt Pepper was their thing, their secret. That's why the final quote was so strong for me. "You just wait," says McCartney -- echoing the feeling in 1967 when he knew he had something great, that was going to shake the world (as it did) and no one but he and a few others knew what it was. And the lesson of the Making of Sgt Pepper is that you and I will never know Sgt Pepper the way McCartney does. And one more thought, if only John Lennon could have been there, what would we have learned. #
I wear a lot of hats. One of them is as a developer of scripting systems. I did a big one, Frontier, developed mostly in the late 80s and 90s. People seem to refer to it in the past tense, but I use Frontier as do others. it does things no other product can. It works. #- As you may know, Drummer is my new outliner-based scripting system for the web. It's still at least a few months from shipping, maybe more. But I'm making big decisions about how it works right now. #
- The same way Frontier was designed around an object database and the Mac filesystem (and later Windows), Drummer works with public and private files on a server.#
- Frontier is a very broad and deep product, but it wasn't originally designed to be so big. The initial idea was to integrate it with the Finder, add a Scripts menu, and have it do things with the file system, and provide a way to program and connect scriptable apps. That was it. Simple. I offered it to Apple. At the time, the early 90s, I knew all the decision-makers there, but I asked for too much money, they thought they could do it for less. So now I had tipped my hand, showed them my product, I figured to be competitive I'd have to add more stuff, which I did have available to me, since I always try out ideas that don't make it into the final product. The product got deeper, but it also got more complicated.#
- I always wondered if it would have worked better if we had started with the small product. We could have shipped sooner. It would have been more approachable, more immediately useful. I think there is a good chance it would have worked better, but it didn't go that way. #
- This time, I'm trying to keep Drummer small, focus on a few innovations, and make a lot of the parts replaceable. #
- I am creating a product, but as with Radio UserLand, I also want to try to create a new use for our computers. With Radio it was blogging and RSS. This time it's a richer, better connected working environment on the net for power users and devs. #
- PS: Power users is a concept that has fallen into disuse, but they still exist, and you can design for them. Some users are very skilled with the technology.#
- PPS: The key innovation in Drummer is JavaScript without the callbacks.#
- PPPS: I posted something about Drummer on Twitter. #
