741–750 of 931 posts
I can think of no better person to ask than Alan Kay: What are the best books relevant to programming that have nothing to do with programming? (e.g. How Buildings Learn, Living Systems, etc.)?
Molecular Biology of the Cell
Notes on a Synthesis of Form
etc
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One of several major mistakes with the web has to do with thinking that the browser is some kind of application "with features" -- if you think of the actual scale of the Internet (and they didn't) you realize that at the very least, the browser, etc, has to be more like an operating system, and with as few features as possible: really to safely run encapsulated modules and deal out resources. It is crazy that after…
Thanks for the insight. In your point of view, on top of the current hardware infrastructure, how do we build a decentralized network operating system (contrary to the old centralized timesharing system)?
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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…
Alan, what is your view on Olive Executable Archive ? https://olivearchive.org/
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I have every reason to like Actors! But think about scaling for a while, ...
Great advice, I am currently lacking there. Thank you! Edit: A follow up if you don't mind - have you investigated multi-agent autonomous systems or agent based modeling?
[Earlier]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945254 ) you mention "good models of processes" and [elsewhere]( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11940688 ) about model building. Which models have been the best for you? Have you read [Robin Milner]( http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/archive/rm135/Bigraphs-draft.pdf )? Do you consider his work to be a good foundation for processes? If not, who do you consider to give a go…
Hi Alan, One of the concepts I've heard you talk about before in interviews and the like is simulation. I think simulation is huge and we should be seeing products that cater towards it, but largely aren't. http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=5 http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/08/links-1214-come-ye-to-b... Do you still think simulation is an important promise of the computer revolution, and are there any…
But these are not really general simulation languages of the kind we need in 2016 and beyond ...
I've seen similarities between your work (OOP) and that of Christopher Alexander (Patterns). Do you have anything to say about how your/his works tie together? (Note that Alexander's work is perhaps even more misrepresented in software than OOP has come to be). For example, he talks a lot about how anything that is to evolve naturally, or even properly serve the human component, must be composed of living structure.…
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Thanks for the insight. In your point of view, on top of the current hardware infrastructure, how do we build a decentralized network operating system (contrary to the old centralized timesharing system)?
Take a look at the Internet itself -- and then take a look at Dave Reed's 1978 PhD thesis at MIT (can be found via the CSAIL website) -- we used many of these ideas in the Croquet project
Since you care about education so deeply, but also seem to be critical of a lot of recent technological developments that appear to be more accessible than some of the systems / approaches we had in the past: Do you think that it is a reasonable path to embrace technologies with shortcomings, and perhaps even to utilize a reduction in expressiveness of UIs, such as hiding the ability to multitask, or to employ the po…
A prime UI design principle -- which is also an education principle -- is that you have to start where the learners/users are. ("All learning happens on the fringes of what you know" -- David Ausubel)
For children especially -- and most humans -- a main way of thinking and learning and knowing is via stories. On the other hand most worthwhile ideas in science, systems, etc. are not in story form (and shouldn't be). So most modern learning should be about how to help the learner build parallel and alternate ways of knowing and learning -- bootstrapping from what our genetics starts us with.
And -- everything we are immersed in causes "normal" to be reset, for most people invisibly. This should be a conscious part of the "helping learning" process.
This could be too elliptical an answer ...
Hi Alan, In your paper "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages", where you introduce the concept of the DynaBook, you explicitly say that the paper should be read as a work of science fiction. I understand that you're a big fan of science fiction. Do you draw any inspiration from science fiction when inventing the future? Thanks, Kevin Related: I've given a talk on "What Computer Scientists can Learn From Scien…