Presented by Yoz Grahame

Also, see Kirrily Robert’s notes from an earlier version of this talk at Wiki Wednesday.

• the social life of code
• how it lives, travels, and breeds
• ... esp among non-programmers

The recipe box of snippets of code

You have recipies, and if you follow them, you get a sponge cake, even if you don't understand it.

Trevor's loop.

• See code snippet on the computer at the local store.
• You modify a bit, and get confirmation.
• Then you experiment with it, learning folklore from other practitioners.
• The system may have safe failures that don't break the hardware.
• How is this different from cargo cult programming?
• Bytes Brothers "computer mystery" books from the 1980's.
• Today's computers don't take you directly into a BASIC prompt.

More Projects

• hacketyhack.net, Why's new project to get kids coding.
• scratch.mit.edu
• Lego mindstorms
• Robo Rally
• toontalk.com

Folk Computing

Folk Computing, using a programable i-ball (Sega Dreamcast programmable memory card)

Taking existing code and mutating it.

What are the easy ways to create, run, and share code today?

Yahoo! Pipes talk to metaverse narrative session person about Pipes

• create own code
• share code

LambdaMoo

• everything is an object

Hey, smalltalk! See also Craig Latta's NetJam

Ning

• group apps
• social networking pieces come out of the box
• you can look at the source (PHP) and modify it
• CCHits, Billboard chart for CC license music

Second Life

• Tringo
• Mike Hobb

Why this works?

Most people don't have the skills or inclination to run hosted code. The "Server'd Gentry"

People, including the Gentry, started moving their code and assets to hosted services:

1. Easy

2. Social [The primary access point into LJ is the friends' page.]

But what about:

• features
• ownership
• control

Cloning is good.

Ning timeliner application using MIT Timeline app.

Why hold off on doing this

• security
• code complexity
• performance drain
• did we mention security

30 million scripts on SL that may or may not be evil running across 4,000 servers, on a language created over a week.

Use:

• JavaScript
• Secured PHP + chroot jails
• SL moving

Rule #1

• Your users will create crap code.
• [Everyone will copy it.]
• Deal with it.

Tricks

• Make performance issues the coder's problem.
• Create language features to help your users to help you.
• Fencing off the really hostile stuff.

The majority of attacks on SL are DoS and permissions exploits (copy my objects without permission); the latter are much easier to fix than the former

How about No Code?

• Hipster PDA
• Flight Progress Strip
• Programming people, rather than computers.
• .walk, a performance piece

Take general systems like wikis, and use them specific purposes like bug tracking

PMWiki supports tables, and queries on table.s.

Wikis for games

• RPG's such as Dragons of the Yellow Sea
• The game of Lexicon
• People move into existing software (street, own uses)

Socialtext allows you to blow wiki entries into different forms (forum, blog)

The Spreadsheet! [ Anil's essay, Joel's essay on Excel]