Igor Razvodovsky’s Reviews > A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing > Status Update

A problem with the task-specific approach is to determine just how task-specific a language should be → this depends on the circumstances under which it will be used. Nardi suggests the activity theory and distributed cognition as two possible frameworks to use to study the context but my guess is they will be useless in establishing boundaries — what should be a part of the system and what shouldn’t. TBD

Wynn made the interesting point that the ambiguity and impreci­sion in mundane conversation itself may, in many situations, be functional and intentional; as she said, “The messiness, potential ambiguity, implicitness... of natural conversation serve many of the purposes that actors have, including those of intimacy and mutuality, through means of less and less explicit surface discourse”