A Small Matter of Programming
“A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing” is a book by Bonnie Nardi, published by MIT Press in 1993. Based on anthropological fieldwork, Nardi studied how end users were already building their own tools using spreadsheets, CAD systems, and other customizable software, far beyond what vendors intended. She documented that non-programmers routinely created sophisticated applications to solve domain-specific problems, challenging the assumption that software development belongs exclusively to professional programmers. The book is an early and influential articulation of the gap between what packaged software delivers and what users actually need, a theme that resurfaces in the Malleable Software movement and in AI-driven, situation-oriented computing.