Aiki is a small experimental programming language designed under a published criterion of apprehension. Alpha 2 is the implemented result of treating that criterion as a hard constraint on both language surface and architecture. The grammar is the sole authority for syntax and is enforced bidirectionally against parser and evaluator behavior. Similar couplings bind formatting to syntax structure, modules to exports, help to the library surface, behavior to executable evidence, and host-facing facilities to explicit capability and realization boundaries. The language makes the same commitments at the surface through exact rational arithmetic, left-to-right evaluation without implicit precedence, explicit grouping, recoverable errors as values, shaped data, first-class functions, modules, and isolated message-passing concurrency. This extended abstract presents Aiki as a working semantic architecture for apprehensible computation, with particular relevance to programming education. The same commitments also apply in professional and scientific settings.

I am a tenured Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems at Tarleton State University, where my work brings information science theory to bear on AI-mediated systems, formative work, and human judgment.

My recent article, “The Informing Act: Apprehension in AI-Mediated Systems,” published in the Journal of Documentation, formalizes information as a change in the configuration of a knowing subject rather than as transmission, retrieval, or content delivery. That work now anchors several related projects on AI use, machine knowing, programming environments, and the design of systems that preserve the conditions for human uptake.

I work across computer information systems, information science, programming language design, and doctoral education, having served on thirteen doctoral dissertation committees across six disciplines. I am Past President of the Southwest Decision Sciences Institute.

Before academia, I spent two decades in industry doing systems architecture, software development, and information security.