I've been thinking about what makes an app or program feel coherent. Like they have an underlying logic.

I think our appreciation of coherency comes from interaction with the natural world, where coherency emerges out of the underlying physics.

Interfaces are not chained to physics but they use it as metaphor a lot.

I've always been drawn to idea that coherency in software apps should come from "going with the grain", sticking to how the underlying software underneath works. That maybe there's something there that could give a foundation like the underlying physics - though it's definitely a different shape of thing than physics is.

I do a lot of this with the image apps, where I try and use drawImage, because it feels like that is the underlying structure of computer drawing - copying bitmaps from one place to another. Because it's 'natural' it can also be done very fast, and that opens up interesting possibilities in software.

A program can feel coherent if it feels like it was made by someone with a point-of-view. Like they thought this is how this process should work. This is connected to the idea of coherency and as emerging from an underlying process, but it's not necessarily the same, I think?

I think about this in relation to music. What makes music feel powerful is if it feels like it comes from a point-of-view. It can take wildly different forms but I think that point-of-view is always what's interesting and compelling to me. Again this seems connected to what makes for interesting software, but it's not the same.

A point-of-view comes across from decisions made at different scales (big-picture and small-picture). Both should have influenced each other in the making.