Four Rules of Simple Design

1. Passes all the tests.
2. Expresses every idea that we need to express.
3. Says everything OnceAndOnlyOnce.
4. Has no superfluous parts.

Email Guidelines

1. Context
2. Sell
3. Ask

Alan Kay's Guidelines for Building the Future

1. Really Advance Something Very Important
2. Visions not goals
3. Fund people not projects
4. Only fund the very best people
5. It's a Research Community, not a research project
6. Fund Problem Finding - not just Problem Solving
7. Milestones not deadlines
8. It's "Baseball" not "Golf"
9. You can't think inside the Beltway!
10. It's about shaping "computer stuff" to human ends per the vision
11. "if you can make your own tools, HW and SW, then you must!"
12. Software drives the hardware, rather than vice versa
13. "Living Lab" - make enough of the inventions so that more than the inventors can use them
14. Argue for clarity, not to win
15. An important part of the research results are new and better researchers
16. The reaching is the reward
17. Better and perfect are the two enemies of WHAT IS ACTUALLY NEEDED!
18. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take! A good hockey player goes to where the puck is; a great one goes to where the puck will be!
19. Go out to the future and bring the future back

Mastering Programming

Time

• Slicing
• One thing at a time
• Make it run, make it right, make it fast
• Easy changes
• Concentration
• Isolation
• Baseline measurement

Learning

• Call your shot
• Concrete hpotheses
• Remove extraneous detail
• Multiple scales

Transcend Logic

• Symmetry
• Aesthetics
• Rhythm
• Tradeoffs

Risk

• Fun list
• Feed ideas
• 80/15/5

Simple Made Easy

Abstraction Questions

• Who - Build from subcomponents that don't rely on each other
• What - Don't complect with How by jamming an interface with implementation.
• When, Where - two components should communicate via a queue instead of directly.
• Why - Business logic
• How - Do the work