Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 931 posts

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#701

Post by david927 »

alankay1 wrote: post #620
david927 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course; we agree. Let me refine my question: In our not-quite-an-industry, we seem to laud attempts to optimize the artifact of a residual hack, and we are absolutely dismissive of attempts to rebuild the stack as being too ambitious. And the problem with being dismissive is that it's a judgement without trial. We have precious few "crazy professors" and no tolerance for them. What can we do? There's the 2020…

"Cops need criminals" "Doctors need disease" Things have happened in the past when passionate and confident people with chops have decided to do something. These have not always correlated with "What is actually needed" (often not) but they usually get things into a state where people who are mainly trying to advance their own goals see some advantage (including "tech chic"). We are certainly not in a position where…

few really good managers of researchers

Bob Taylor has been generally praised as a great manager, and I believe them of course. But when I heard stories of his management style, it seemed to go against every instinct we have on how to foster creativity. Could you comment on that?

Also, in terms of funding, I wonder -- haven't things changed? Wasn't funding more important in, say, the 1960's and 70's due to the cost of computer time, especially at the processing level that would let you "see the future." A $1000 computer today is not so different, in terms of power, from a similar machine 5 years ago, right?

Things have happened in the past when passionate and confident people with chops have decided to do something.

But wasn't the past more open? When a field is just forming, everything is crazy, so nothing is. It's only when it has solidified (and in exactly the wrong direction) that you would more expect to find a "crazy professor" having more of an impact, right?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#702

Post by blihp »

alankay1 wrote: post #693
blihp wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, names have their problems. But as a tactical solution URLs can be used to send high-level messages or at least as a name resolution scheme to initiate communication between two or more OO systems. And URLs are just names... (credit where it is due: I first heard the thought expressed by you and it gets the job done until something better comes along) Admittedly this does not (directly) address the issue of s…

Keep on turning the crank ... What if you need something but don't know its name or URL? Etc.

My example definitely presumed things like service discovery which gets you to URLs. But I think I see the larger point you make about what if you don't even know what kind services are available (which my example assumes you already know) and once told of their existence how do you negotiate their capabilities and usage (my example, as I envisioned it, completely falls apart here without some major plumbing which might require running an open sewage line through the kitchen. i.e. probably not the best way to do it)

P.S. I have found the team's work on STEPS quite thought provoking. If anyone could find the time once things settle down, it would be most appreciated if some quick docs re: how to reproduce (i.e. build) the Frank environment could be put together. (if they already exist, a pointer to them would be helpful)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#703

Post by cyphar »

astrodust wrote: post #205
pault wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not a big Unix fan What is your preferred technology stack?

What's a good non-UNIX open-source operating system that's useful for day-to-day work, or at least academically significant enough that it's worth diving in to?

There's GNU, which is by definition not UNIX. ;)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#704

Post by dredmorbius »

alankay1 wrote: post #673
dredmorbius wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your systems-as-a-lingua-franca suggestion seems straight up David Christian's "Big History" concept: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History "Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities,[1][2][3][4][5] and explores huma…

I will just reply that many of my best friends wound up at SFI and I've had a long association, etc. And that -- I think you realize this -- what I was advocating is something simpler than the "Big History" idea ...

On friends winding up at SFI: that's good to hear multiple ways -- for your friends, your familiarity, and yet another endorsement of the Institute.

Thinking in Systems (and not just Meadows' book) is something I'd also like to see developed more fully. Big History is more than that, but it's also one logical development -- systems pervasive throughout the academic curriculum. I think that's a powerful concept.

There's also the possiblity that many people don't and cannot get systems thinking. Another author I've been reading, William Ophuls (most especially Plato's Revenge) discusses this in the context of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, and comes to sobering conclusions regarding facing social challenges based on typical population cognitive foundations. Basing your Solution to the World's Problems on "all the children are above average" is bound to fail.

Thanks again for your time.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#705

Post by mmiller »

alankay1 wrote: post #524
username3 wrote: post #270

Is there any site that lists all arguments from all sides and reach a conclusion? If they don't reach a conclusion, do they have an issue tracking system and leave the issue open for anyone to find easily and respond? Debates should have a programming language, have CI for new arguments, have unit tests to check logic, have issues tracked and collaborated on GitHub.

The problems with most arguments is that they arguers assume they are in a valid context (this is usually not the case, and this is the central problem of "being rational"). Another way to look at it is "Forget about trying to win an argument -- use argumentation to try to understand the issues better and from more perspectives ..."

I think another way of looking at what you said is people can feel threatened or diminished by certain arguments, even if they're not directed at them, when certain cherished premises are challenged, and part of learning to argue well is to learn to take those feelings as signals that the argument needs to be looked at closely and seriously, but not as truth. It's not the final word, but more checking needs to be done to see if one's own premises are close to reality or not. Of course, that always needs to be done, but from what I see, many people are not equipped to deal with an argument that hits a nerve, much less to listen to ideas that don't agree with each other, and consider the argument based on its content, not on attitudes ("What it sounds like or feels like").

Since "fast and slow" have been a part of the discussion here, perhaps what I'm describing has to do with the relationship between "System 1" and System 2?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#706

Post by mathattack »

alankay1 wrote: post #525
mathattack wrote: post #176

Hi Alan. A lot has been made of the visions that your colleagues and you had that ultimately became the fabric of our industry. Did you have any ideas, predictions or visions which ultimately didn't play out? (And any ideas on why?) Thank you very much to your contributions to our industry. Anyone blessed to be working in this field today owes you an enormous debt of gratitude. You have made a dent in the universe.

Our most unrealistic assumption was that when presented with really good ideas most people will most definitely learn and use them to make progress. In reality, only a tiny percentage can do this, and it is an enormous amount of work to deal with the norms.

Very insightful. There's a large gap between the intellectually curious early adopters and the majority in the middle. I just recall how long people were still auto-paying AOL when better options were available. :-)

Thanks again!

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#707

Post by mmiller »

kkoomi wrote: post #630
alankay1 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Could you tell what you mean by data scaling badly?

The problem with the idea of procedures acting on data structures is that as a system scales up, it gets more complex in terms of its data structure, and the amount of code that must operate on it, and be dependent on it. As that happens, it gets harder to change, both in terms of the structure, and the procedures that work on it. The dependencies between the structure and procedures grow in number and type. The attempt to understand it creates a cognitive load that makes it difficult and inefficient to keep track of them (if not impossible), and keep consistency in how they operate. Secondly, the amount of code that's required to operate up to spec. becomes so voluminous that it creates a cognitive load that is too much to handle, in terms of finding and fixing bugs.

Part of scaling is understanding the relationship between what is necessary to express to carry out the complete, intended model, and the number of relationships (the best I can express this is "in chunks") that we can keep track of simultaneously. Modern engineering in other fields of endeavor understands this notion of cognitive load and complexity, in terms trying to organize resources such that a constructed structure can carry out its intended function well as a result of principled organization methods.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#708

Post by mmiller »

david927 wrote: post #701
alankay1 wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cops need criminals" "Doctors need disease" Things have happened in the past when passionate and confident people with chops have decided to do something. These have not always correlated with "What is actually needed" (often not) but they usually get things into a state where people who are mainly trying to advance their own goals see some advantage (including "tech chic"). We are certainly not in a position where…

few really good managers of researchers Bob Taylor has been generally praised as a great manager, and I believe them of course. But when I heard stories of his management style, it seemed to go against every instinct we have on how to foster creativity. Could you comment on that? Also, in terms of funding, I wonder -- haven't things changed? Wasn't funding more important in, say, the 1960's and 70's due to the cost o…

As Alan has said, the importance of funding is more about finding the problem. There's a lot of wandering and false leads involved (though, finding out the false leads is nevertheless valuable. It's still new knowledge). In terms of hardware, the thing to anticipate is what computing power will be necessary for accomplishing things decades from now, and paying the bill for that, not considering what one can buy from a computer retailer today, because that doesn't create the excuse to think of what computers will be able to do.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#709

Post by ehmorris »

mischief01 wrote: post #485

It is not unlikely that you will never get to the same league as 'the inventors'. Most people are mediocre at everything they do and will always be. Most likely that includes you. We live in a culture that doesn't just tell everyone that they can easily outgrow mediocrity, no, this culture tells people they are above it from the very start. The following advice doesn't apply to geniuses or those who can be, but it ap…

This comment is so annoying - the perfect HN mix of pretentious and nihilist.

If you really think that average people trying to create anything will make things worse, then you're probably fine with the entertainment-addiction cycle in the first place. Maybe you work for supercell.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#710

Post by mmiller »

alankay1 wrote: post #665
npm83 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is missing from Smalltalk, and what would you expect for the "21th century Smalltalk" if there was such think? Even though is "old", I find it extremely valuable for learning to think and reason in a pure OO fashion.

It's worth thinking about what scales and what doesn't scale so well. For example, names are relatively local conventions. We could expect to have to find better ways to describe resources, or perhaps "send processes rather than messages". Think about what's really interesting about the way Parc used what became Postscript instead of trying to define a file format for "documents" for printers ... (a programming langu…

Re. consider "send processes rather than messages"

Interesting thought to ponder!... What came to mind is Smalltalk-80 kind of did that, though the processes (blocks) were not in the "driver's seat" of the interaction. They came as "payload."

Post reply on HN