In the last view weeks, some new things came up which pushed me to new point of views on the world of software.
The first is the iPhone from Apple. I tried out the SDK, and I like it very much. Old feelings and memories came up from the time I wrote my software for my Diploma thesis on the NeXTStep. I like Objective-C, I like the graphics model (Display Postscript then, Qwartz or Display PDF now).... it is an exicting way to realize ideas.
But the property "new point of view" is not a consequence from the quality of the SDK or the language. The iPhone and its new way of user experience is the guide to look different to User Interfaces. Multitouch offers new ways of interactive work with data, and the limited screen size forces to reduce the optical design down to what is really needed. For example, I observed that for some tasks the iPhone is my favorite tool: there are some web sites which are optimized for iPhone (or mobile phones) so that they are more comfortable to use with such devices. And as a result, using the iPhone I only get the relevant things are displayed instead of the information flood presented on many current web pages when using the computer - and I hope there will be a lot of such optimized web pages in the future.
These two constraints - show the relevant in a small screen in a aesthetic (!) way - and make the data or the documents itself the objects of manipulation - are the reasons to decide to work in future with the iPhone and the SDK.
One remark: of course these things are not complete new, theoretic papers or books (like the one from Raskin an other work) described such problems and solutions already. Not to forget the original idea from the DynaBook of Alan Kay. But now it has practical existence, there is an interesting device, you can play with its hard- and software.
The other thing giving me a new point of view has to do with my work at the company. Here I got some insight in the field of "safety software analysis". Working in this area means to look at possible hazards, which can be caused by the software and how strong such a hazard would be if it happens. Then, in dependency which international or national standard for safety must be applied, the analysis starts to determine which probability of failure must be required from software modules or even single functions, if the hazard should happen with a given probability at most.
All these things have to do with cause chains, probability and analysis and modeling of software. Definitively my interest, but in the sum for me also a new point of view on software :-)
