Programmers are humans too: On the design of notations

Imagine, hypothetically, that programmers are humans ... despite all evidence to the contrary: * They work at night, and sleep during the day; * They only need 2 hours of sleep; * They survive on a diet of pure caffeine and sugar; * Many actually enjoy using the vi editor. Also pretend, just for a moment, that their chief method of communicating with a computer was with programming languages. What should you do? Designing notations, including programming languages, is not a purely technical exercise, especially since humans have to use them. Human-computer interaction metrics such as speed of use, error avoidance, and enjoyability can be applied just as well to notations as physical devices and computer programs.