Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

Post by alankay » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

ontouchstart wrote: post #616

alankay wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of "old and fundamental" ideas that are not good anymore, if they ever were. The point here is that you were able to find the interpreter of the sentence and ask a question, but the two were still separated. For important negotiations we don't send telegrams, we send ambassadors. This is what objects are all about, and it continues to be amazing to me that the real necessities and practical necessities…

I think object is a very powerful idea to wrap "local" context. But in a network (communication) environment, it is still challenging to handle "remote" context with object. That is why we have APIs and serialization/deserialization overhead. In the ideal homogeneous world of smalltalk, it is a less issue. But if you want a Windows machine to talk to a Unix, the remote context becomes an issue. In principle we can se…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

msutherl wrote: post #378

Hi Alan, I'd like to go deeper into your notion of "pop cultures" vs. "progress", in the context of innovation, but also the arts. Can you recommend some readings that might fill out those concepts?

Post by astrobe_ » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

michaelscott wrote: post #601

alankay1 wrote: post #543

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I think "real AI" could help (because it could also explain as well as configure). Systems that can't explain themselves (and most can't) are a very bad idea.

Because when things go sideways a human can't fix anything without copious amounts of reading/testing/poking around? I'm taking your meaning of "explain" literally here, which might be shortsighted. Either way, the idea of machines or systems as "living" and able to communicate intent and process, even if only within their own "umwelt", is really interesting. Even a taste of that would make modern systems easier to d…

Post by ontouchstart » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 5:06 PM UTC

alankay wrote: post #622

ontouchstart wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think object is a very powerful idea to wrap "local" context. But in a network (communication) environment, it is still challenging to handle "remote" context with object. That is why we have APIs and serialization/deserialization overhead. In the ideal homogeneous world of smalltalk, it is a less issue. But if you want a Windows machine to talk to a Unix, the remote context becomes an issue. In principle we can se…

This is why "the objects of the future" have to be ambassadors that can negotiate with other objects they've never seen. Think about this as one of the consequences of massive scaling ...

Post by kkoomi » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 5:07 PM UTC

alankay1 wrote: post #520

zyxzevn wrote: post #411

Hi Alan, Since you may spend another day answering questions.. a got some more for you :-) What do you think about the different paradigms in programming? And what do you think about type theory, etc? Bonus question: I am trying to develop a new general programming system for children. I was inspired by Smalltalk and ELM. http://www.reddit.com/r/unseen_programming It is a graphical system that uses function blocks co…

A good heuristic for designing programming languages is to try to take the largest most complicated kinds of things you want to do, work them out, and then see if there is a "language lurking". Most people make the big mistake of lovingly making small neat examples that are easy to learn -- these often don't scale at all well. E.g. "data" in the small "seems natural" but the whole idea scales terribly. And so forth f…