Ward via matrix 
Please help me remember the history of "software as tools". What are the landmark papers and what tools did they describe? When is software not a tool? What was the prevailing metaphor for software that preceded the tools-metaphor? Perhaps the software-as-machine predated tools with an input connected to an output by some conveyer belt about which we say garbage-in-garbage-out.
I recall the origin story of grep extracted from ed and at home in nascent unix, the metaphorical workbench. I know it it is said of humans that we make tools then our tools make us. How has that played out in modern development?
Ralf via matrix
Re: Software as Tools
@Ward
> In a summary of Marshall McLuhan's work, John Culkin warned us that ''We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us''. This is a remarkable statement that deserves closer scrutiny. If it is correct, we should explicitly choose the tools we use because they will determine the way we are going to think.
See my Moldable Development page with a link to a lecture by Tudor Girba page , published by Oscar Nierstrasz, Universität Bern on 14 October 2020, from which I have taken the quote, and discord
~
CULKIN, John M., 1967. A schoolman’s guide to Marshall McLuhan. 1967. Saturday Review, Incorporated. pdf [Accessed 24 January 2024]. → r.Culkin.McLuhan
Quote Origin: We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us quoteinvestigator
~
# When Is Software Not a Tool?
That depends mostly on the definition of "Software". I tend to use the term widely, including everything that enters into some Computation. That makes many data files software, but not tools. (Konrad Hinsen via matrix )
Ward via matrix
I see software more and more like television with ads and all the other lies. These come from software, I guess, and that software is a tool for someone, just not for me.
Some people talk about software Craftsmanship. This rests somewhere between art and engineering. We can also distinguish the user of a tool and the tool maker. There is still applied to the craftsman some notion of accomplishment using tools. (Aside: I use these terms as gender neutral.)