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# About

I'm interested in the past and future of tools for thinking and programming, inspired by the work of [<NAME>](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/), [<NAME>](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY&feature=youtu.be), [<NAME>](http://www.chris-granger.com/2014/03/27/toward-a-better-programming/), and others.

For the past few years I've worked at [Panorama Education](http://www.panoramaed.com), where we help K-12 schools use data to better support their students and communities.

You can find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/geoffreylitt) and [email](mailto:<EMAIL>). Please reach out if I might be able to help you in any way.<commit_msg>updated about page<commit_after>---
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# About

## Currently...

I'm pursuing a PhD in Computer Science at MIT, in the [Software Design Group](https://sdg.csail.mit.edu/).

Here are some areas I'm thinking about these days:

**Making programming more accessible**: (aka end-user programming, no-code development): how can we open up the full power of computing to more people, without the current barriers of programming? What does the world look like when people can flexibly modify and create their own software?

Spreadsheets are a major success story in this arena. Can we pinpoint the underlying reasons why they succeeded, and extend those lessons to other domains?

Another angle I'm pondering is how to make software amenable to being extended with plugins.

**Futuristic programming languages, environments, debuggers**: Much of the way that experts do programming is shockingly similar to how it was done decades ago.

How can we co-design languages and environments that give programmers more feedback and visibility into what they're doing, going far beyond typical debuggers? My [Margin Notes](/margin-notes) project explored one way to use runtime traces to help programmers understand the data flowing through their programs.

I'm also interested in programming environments that break out of plaintext through structured editing or visual metaphors.

**Tools for thought**: Computers have massive potential to serve as a new medium that levels up our ability to think, just as writing and mass literacy has enabled humans to think in far more sophisticated ways. How can we design tools that leverage computers to level up our thinking? 

## Contact me!

**Please reach out** if you're interested in talking about these topics, or if I might be able to help you in some way! You can contact me via [email](mailto:<EMAIL>) or on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/geoffreylitt).

## Before that...

From 2013 to 2019, I was an early engineer at [Panorama Education](http://www.panoramaed.com) (YC S13), a startup helping K-12 educators use data to better understand their students and schools. I wore various hats across engineering, product, and design, and helped grow Panorama into a leading education platform used by over 9 million students across the country. Here's a [sample project](/projects/free-response-analytics.html) I worked on to categorize text responses to school feedback surveys.

From 2010 to 2014, I got my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Yale University, where I played in the all-cello rock band Low Strung.

## Inspirations

Here's a very incomplete list of people whose work I've found inspirational. If you're like me, maybe you will too.

* [<NAME>](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/)
* [<NAME>](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY&feature=youtu.be)
* [<NAME>](http://www.chris-granger.com/2014/03/27/toward-a-better-programming/)
* [<NAME>](https://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=1145)
* [<NAME>](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~shihpinc/gneiss.html)
* [<NAME>](http://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/209/448/)
* [<NAME>](http://people.csail.mit.edu/dnj/)
* [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death)
* [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book))
* [<NAME>](https://hazel.org/)
* [<NAME>](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/)
* [<NAME>](https://eglassman.github.io/examplore/)
* [<NAME>](http://glench.com/LegibleMathematics/)
* [<NAME>](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~NatProg/whyline-java.html)
* [<NAME>](https://distill.pub/2017/aia/)
* [<NAME>](https://mavo.io/)
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