Glen Chiacchieri, a programmer and later therapist, makes experimental games and interactive tools, and writes about computing and Dynamicland.
HN commenters link his playful projects like ScreamyBird and Laser Socks, and include his site in lists of favorite personal blogs.
> I do wonder if the project is still under active development.
They've publicly acknowledged that they're still working but have been quiet.
> I imagine it’s very frustrating to not have much to show after more than half a decade of development.
Yes and No. I think, rightly so, they are concerned about pre-mature commercialization. Tech transfer in HCI-like domains can often be wrought with issues:
"The Dynamic Medium Group’s vision is rooted in the idea that the computer revolution of the ’70s and early ’80s was cut short, primarily by premature commercialization. While the computer as a medium was still unfolding its potential, and way before it could do so entirely, it was solidified into commercial products, thereby stifling its free growth. Once corporations had built their businesses on the ideas developed so far, they were only interested in incremental change that could easily be integrated into the products, rather than revolutionary new ideas.
Because of this cautionary tale and to avoid repeating history, the group is wary when it comes to public attention and deliberately reserved in what it shares. "
However, I do think that getting ongoing feedback & recognition of impact is important even in long-term research efforts. This was hinted at in Glen's note on why he left Dynamicland: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/
The saddest observation through all this is ... why don't academia or corporate research labs do this type of…
Your plan to work through past Google Code Jam problems sounds great. I'm sure that process would help build your intuition for what tools are actually helpful when working on this specific type of problem, which would probably have implications for lots of programs. Personally, I think this type of first-person empiricism is a highly undervalued resource.
Also, I wish there were more research labs that could support folks in UIs for programming like this. Right now there are only a couple and a lot of independent people dabbling.
As for my work, you can see it at http://glench.com
https://worrydream.com
https://macwright.com/
https://www.petemillspaugh.com/
https://www.geoffreylitt.com/
https://maggieappleton.com/
https://www.robinsloan.com/
https://thesephist.com/
https://wattenberger.com/
http://conal.net/
https://www.todepond.com/
https://devonzuegel.com/
https://nadia.xyz/
https://adamwiggins.com/
http://glench.com/
https://ncase.me/
Classic from my old Haskell professor: https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/abstraction-intuition-and-the-monad-tutorial-fallacy/
I think you can make some more sense of this if you read the piece, and watch the video on laser socks [0]. That was a game designed at the CDG lab that is the pre-cursor to Dynamicland.
[0]: http://glench.com/LaserSocks/
On Firefox on Linux, the favicon flickers if changed quickly in this example.
The webcam is a hilarious example. Reminds me of this 1-dimensional video game you can play in your address bar. http://glench.com/hash/
I love the description of Dynamicland as “Hypercard in the World”[1].
[1] From the Laser Socks write-up — a great example of a game that came out of Dynamicland: http://glench.com/LaserSocks/