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Stefan Cordova
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Simonyi has been writing and developing code for Microsoft Office for over 20 years. Now he wants to reinvent the way code is written using what he calls intentional programming. Simonyi left Microsoft in 2002 to work on intentional programming. Microsoft had been making significant strides with the .NET framework and Simonyi’s intentional programming was not very practical, much more disruptive, and required a radical change from existing programming models. Programming started out with the basic binary code of 1s and 0s and since has made significant gains using abstractions to write the code. Each year code gets more advanced by using more and more abstractions. Simonyi’s wants to completely change this process by having end users be the programming developers instead of the programming developers themselves. Those people that are trained experts in the field understand those processes better and would be better able to come up with a system than the programmers writing the code.

Intentional software invokes two main lines of criticism. The first is how do you represent intent. The second is the law of leaky abstractions. Intentional programming can be understood by the simple metaphor of making a bench. The benchmaker arrives with odd looking parts and asks each people what parts they like. He would ask questions such as what is the most important feature, what’s the next most important feature, what materials do you like and so on. After each answer the bench maker would then upload the new bench onto a screen to see if it satisfied the users. If the image was not right they would backtrack and answer the questions differently. Once the users were satisfied the benchmaker pressed the make button and out came a bench that everyone was satisfied with. Substitute software for benchmaking and you will understand intentional programming. Now users are able to work with a familiar language to them and alter the appearance on the screen without having to master the underlying code. The computer transforms that image or process you created and write the code for you.

This article was very interesting although I could have gone without the long history of Simonyi’s life and instead just focused more on intentional programming. This technology is really amazing and I hope that Simonyi can actually develop it. Our systems could be so much better if the end users who actually use those programs could develop the processes. People who have watched this project closely say that Simonyi is on the right track and that gives me hope that this new technology will be developed sooner rather than later.

Sara Supple
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Charles Simonyi is a man who has constantly set out to change and evolve the world of programming as we have known it. Born in Hungary, he started his work on a relic computer run on vacuum tubes. Arriving in the US to attend Berkeley, he joined forces with a professor working for a company that did eventually fail, but led to Simonyi working with the famous Xerox PARC labs, and later becoming one of the greatest programmers with Microsoft. Specifically, Simonyi has worked to simplify the coding procedures, ultimately allowing everyday users to code their own programs using what he calls intentional programming/software. The idea is that generic tools will allow users to interact with the coding behind their programs and make changes as they see fit. Instead of programmers handing off their coding work to ‘worker bees’ like his earlier thesis had asserted, the code would go into a generator, “a program that takes in a set of relatively high-level commands and spits out more-detailed working code” (Technology Review). With this effort, it was Simonyi’s hope that programmers could focus on the creative process of their work, rather then wasting brain space with the minute and unnecessary details that coding required.

Simonyi’s work has attracted some negative associations, however. Programmers don’t believe it is possible to capture computer users’ intentions, which would be like trying to understand every individual’s brains intentions. The second argument is that programmers don’t like to be distanced from their code- the programs usually have their own way of doing things, and their personal creativity suffers.

I really can understand the relevance of this article. Dealing with code right now in my MIS 271 class, I can completely understand Simonyi’s reasoning for wanting to make the coding process easier to the every-day user. However, I also understand the arguments against Simonyi’s efforts. While it would be a great invention, when something goes wrong with the program (and it will, eventually) someone is going to have to go into the program to figure out what happened- and that takes place in the code. I also feel that if Simonyi were a typical entrepreneur with limited cash flow and a deadline to meet, his intentional software would no longer be an option. While he is busy perfecting his software to meet the needs of companies he is working with now, software and computers will continue to evolve and leave him behind. Even though those who have researched his ideas understand the concepts and say he is on the right track, with no real deadline pushing him to get his product on the market I feel as if Simonyi’s work will remain today where it has been since its creation- not in the hands of consumers.