A workshop in software design
i'm Barish.
his is where I think out loud about software design — about what makes a tool feel alive, why most computing feels brittle, and what it would take for the things we build to better fit the shape of how people actually work. Right now I'm pulling on a few threads: margin , and locust . Older work is in the projects index; loose threads in notes and open questions.
Areas I keep returning tofive
Currently in the lab2
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Margin
An experiment in marginalia as a primary writing surface — what happens when the side-note is more important than the main text. -
Locust
A small offline-first reading client that syncs across devices via CRDTs — a testing ground for ideas in Local-First Software.
Recently touched
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Gesture set v2
Second draft of the gesture vocabulary for Margin, after the first prototype. -
Andy Matuschak
A working understanding of Matuschak's stance on tools for thought, attention, and the role of the reader. -
Notes vs. marks
Two different annotation primitives, often confused, with very different design implications. -
A reading practice that survives the week
The small set of habits that actually let me read seriously alongside making things. -
Sync architecture sketch
Working notes on the sync layer. SQLite + a tiny relay; CRDT on top; end-to-end encrypted. -
A reader's stance
On reading as an active, aggressive thing — and why the tools we have mostly assume otherwise.