👋 Hi folks. Surprised I didn’t find this community sooner, but glad this is a thing! I’m an art director, designer, and mediocre dev in London. Currently working at egghead.io (web dev educational platform) where I spend a lot of time designing and illustrating metaphors for programming concepts. Also helped co-create a book that uses visual diagrams to explain javascript: justjavascript.com. That project sent me down the rabbit hole of researching visual programming languages and alternate programming mediums. I was already a Victor/Kay/Engelbart/Xanadu obsessive, so it all comes full circle. I’m also a cultural anthropologist by training, and headed in an MSc in digital anthropology at UCL. Interested in the cultural dynamics of programming communities – specifically JavaScript-land since that’s where I tend to hang out. Glad to have found this corner of the web and always up for a chat with folks interested in the same topics.

So, that's you! 🙂 I mean I really enjoyed your work in the "Just JavaScript" emails. When I read them I thought that these illustrations are very good at explaining core JavaScript behaviors, and that there is some similarity with what is going on here on the Future of Coding community. Welcome here!

Thanks for the tweet about my JS visual editor work! Now I know how you found out about it. 😄 I hadn’t seen Just JavaScript, but I’m subscribed now.

Welcome! I really liked this write up, which I feel applies to designing programming concepts as well, not just drawing them. Very relevant to this community. https://maggieappleton.com/drawinginvisibles1

That is beautiful work!

Great to have you here! 😄

Hey Maggie, welcome!

Thanks for all the warm welcomes! @ogadaki Glad you enjoyed just JS. Have to say my co-creator Dan is really the JS whiz on that project, but I’m happy I get to help bring it to life with visuals. @Katie Bell I think I stumbled across your talk in some deep googling binge a while ago, but was glad to see your name around this slack too. Reminded me to tweet about it 😄 @shalabh Thanks, I agree the principles I explore there could certainly extend beyond illustration. Metaphor design is a wonderfully flexible tool

Really nice @Maggie Appleton. I love the cultural anthropology aspect, as I believe one of our greatest failings in software is ignoring history. Also that naming is hard and reductionist language design isn't a silver bullet.

Learning to Metaphorically See

I like this twist of phrase. :^)