James Fallows has been writing thoughtfully about computer software for longer than most of us have been using it. Years ago he wrote a definitive paean (long online here but apparently no longer) to Lotus Agenda, Mitch Kapor’s legendary personal information manager. (I say “a” rather than “the” because this program evoked such loyalty from smart writers it actually ended up with two definitive paeans; the other was by Jimmy Guterman.)
In the new issue of the Atlantic, Fallows writes about two latter-day PIMs — Microsoft’s OneNote and Chandler, the long-gestating project of Kapor’s Open Source Applications Foundation, the tale of which forms the central narrative of my book, Dreaming in Code. He interviewed me for the article; though most of our conversation wound up on the cutting-room floor, I did make it into one paragraph. I wish the article were online (there’s a stub here, but the full piece is only accessible to subscribers). But I couldn’t ask for a better venue for my first distant-early-warning book publicity. Here’s the relevant graph:
Despite substantial follow-up grants from foundations and universities, the team developing Chandler has so far released only a partly functional calendar application. Scott Rosenberg, of Salon magazine, became an “embedded journalist” on the Chandler project from 2003 to 2005 in order to investigate why good software is so hard to make. (His book about Chandler and complex software design, Dreaming in Code, will be published in November [now, January]). “It is taking a long time, but anyone who writes off Chandler is being short-sighted,” he told me. “They are on a quest.”
Fallows asked me whether I thought the book had turned out to be a comedy or a tragedy.
“Neither,” I replied, thinking furiously on my feet, my brain flashing back to my decade as a theater and movie critic. “It’s an epic!”
[tags]James Fallows, Dreaming in Code, Chandler[/tags]
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