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I Am A Design Chauvinist. I Believe That Good Design Is Magical And Not To Be Lightly Tinkered With. The Difference Between A Great Design And A Lousy One Is In The Meshing Of The Thousand Details That Either Fit Or Don't, And The Spirit Of The Passionate Intellect That Has Tied Them Together, Or Tried. That's Why Programming - Or Buying Software - On The Basis Of "lists Of Features" Is A Doomed And Misguided Effort. The Features Can Be Thrown Together, As In A Garbage Can, Or Carefully Laid Together And Interwoven In Elegant Unification, As In Apl, Or The Forth Language, Or The Game Of Chess.

-Ted Nelson

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I Am A Design

Ted Nelson

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I Am A Design Chauvinist. I Believe That Good Design Is Magical And Not To Be Lightly Tinkered With. The Difference Between A Great Design And A Lousy One Is In The Meshing Of The Thousand Details That Either Fit Or Don't, And The Spirit Of The Passionate Intellect That Has Tied Them Together, Or Tried. That's Why Programming - Or Buying Software - On The Basis Of "lists Of Features" Is A Doomed And Misguided Effort. The Features Can Be Thrown Together, As In A Garbage Can, Or Carefully Laid Together And Interwoven In Elegant Unification, As In Apl, Or The Forth Language, Or The Game Of Chess.

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They Were Saying Computers Deal With Numbers. This Was Absolutely Nonsense. Computers Deal With Arbitrary Information Of Any Kind.

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So In My Uncertainty, I Went To Graduate School And There It All Happened.

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Right Now You Are A Prisoner Of Each Application You Use. You Have Only The Options That Were Given You By The Developer Of That Application.

I See Professionalism As A Spreading Disease Of The Present-day World, A Sort Of Poly-oligarchy By Which Various Groups (subway Conductors, Social Workers, Bricklayers) Can Bring Things To A Halt If Their Particular Demands Are Not Met. (meanwhile, The Irrelevance Of Each Profession Increases, In Proportion To Its Increasing Rigidity.) Such Lucky Groups Demand More In Each Go-round - But Meantime, The Number Who Are Permanently Unemployed Grows And Grows.

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I Am A Design Chauvinist. I Believe That Good Design Is Magical And Not To Be Lightly Tinkered With. The Difference Between A Great Design And A Lousy One Is In The Meshing Of The Thousand Details That Either Fit Or Don't, And The Spirit Of The Passionate Intellect That Has Tied Them Together, Or Tried. That's Why Programming - Or Buying Software - On The Basis Of "lists Of Features" Is A Doomed And Misguided Effort. The Features Can Be Thrown Together, As In A Garbage Can, Or Carefully Laid Together And Interwoven In Elegant Unification, As In Apl, Or The Forth Language, Or The Game Of Chess.

The Four Walls Of Paper Are Like A Prison Because Every Idea Wants To Spring Out In All Directions - Everything Is Connected With Everything Else, Sometimes More Than Others.

Most People Are Fools, Most Authority Is Malignant, God Does Not Exist, And Everything Is Wrong.

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