Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today • Hacker News Board

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#751

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

dflock wrote: post #625

Hi Alan, You've said here a few times here that maybe "data" (in quotes), is a bad idea. Clearly data itself isn't a bad idea, it's just data. What do you mean by the quotes? That the way we think about data in programming is bad? In what context? I've been thinking & reading about Data Flow programming & languages - datalog, lucid, deadalus/bloom etc... in the context of big data & distributed systems and the work t…

Just to say one more time here: the central idea is "meaning", and "data" has no meaning without "process" (you can't even distinguish a fly spec from an intentional mark without a process.

One of many perspectives here is to think of "anything" as a "message" and then ask what does it take to "receive the message"?

People are used to doing (a rather flawed version of) this without being self-aware, so they tend to focus on the ostensive "message" rather than the processes needed to "find the actual message and 'understand' it".

Both Shannon and McLuhan in very different both tremendously useful ways were able to home in on what is really important here.

Most humans are quite naive about this -- but it is endlessly surprising to me -- and depressing -- to see computer people exhibit similar naivete.

For example, the extent to which most code today relies on "outside of code" programmer views (and hopes) is astounding and distressing.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#752

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

lispython wrote: post #498

Hi Alan, I'm an editor at Programmer Magazine in China[1], could you allow me to translate your answers into Chinese, and share with readers in China? [1] http://programmer.com.cn/

Sure -- and you have my permission to make things more clear in the process!

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#753

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

xt00 wrote: post #52

Hi Alan, do you think privacy on the web should be guaranteed by design or malleable such that in special cases the government can look up your google searches and see if you follow terrorists on twitter? When I say guaranteed by design, I mean should people be creating a system to obfuscate, encrypt, and highly confuse the ability of people who wish to track/deduce what people are doing on the web?

What are the most important purposes for our living in a society?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#754

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

stop1234 wrote: post #450

Hi Alan, Thank you for spending some of your time here and writing your thoughts. I would like to ask you for some advice. The idiom "Everything old is new again" is currently picking up steam, especially in the hardware and software scene. Amazing stuff is happening but it is being drowned in the mass pursuit of profit for mediocrity in both product and experience. What would you say to those who are creating wonder…

Take a look at what Sam Altman is doing with YC Research.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#755

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

mmiller wrote: post #705

alankay1 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don…

Most people confuse "arguing" with "debating".

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#756

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

melloclello wrote: post #261

Hi Alan, what do you think of the Unison project? [1] On the surface it's a structured editor for a type safe language in which it's impossible to write an invalid program, but the author has some pretty lofty goals for it. [1] http://unisonweb.org/2015-05-07/about.html

Many valid programs are quite wrong.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#757

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

dineshp2 wrote: post #453

Hi Alan! From your comments, it's clear that you are not happy with the state of programming languages as it stands. You mentioned that the current languages lack safe meta-definition and also that the next generation of languages should make us think better. Apart from the above, could you mention more properties or features of programming languages, at a high level of course, that you consider should be part of the…

I've written and talked about this over the last decade or so. I think a huge problem in even thinking about this is that the people who should be thinking about it have gotten very fluent in many ways of "programming" that are almost certainly not just obsolete but make it very difficult to think about what are likely to be the most important issues of today.

If we look at CAD->SIM->FAB in various engineering fields -- mechanical, electrical, biological, etc. -- we see something more like what is needed. From another view, if we look at the great need for designing and assessing, etc. we can see that the representations we need for "requirements", "specs", "legalities", etc have to be debuggable, have to run, and might as well just flow into a new kind of "CAD->SIM->FAB" process for programming. A lot of what has to happen is to replace main-stream "hows" with "whats" (and have many of the hows be automatic, and all of them "from the side).

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#758

Post by spfccmt42 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

diiq wrote: post #567

alankay1 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the world actually need?

Not sure how seriously to treat that question, but... It seems like a cheap answer, but it needs more people, with more perspectives, trying out various answers to this question. I suspect the greatest long-term leverage comes from providing people relief from the cognitive load of fighting for food, shelter, health, transportation, and education. Those are heavy goals that lots of people have spent lots of time shif…

>but it needs more people,

Or less.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#759

Post by nkassis » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #728

tremon wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't put your kid in a room full of crisps, sweets, alcohol, drugs, pornography, and expect it to come out ten, fifteen years later as a healthy individual that is not an addict to none of them I know this is bandied about a lot, but is this actually proven? With the exception of drugs, all of those you mention have been within easy reach for me (actually, as a Dutchman, even softdrugs were just one step away if…

I'm not a native speaker of English, so I wonder: does kid not mean person not yet adolescent? I'm referring to 0-14 yrs olds when I say kid. If we agree on that, and you still say, it's not proven, we can try, well then I can't do much than hoping you either don't have children or no child's responsibility is on you otherwise.

Reading his post I believe he meant the above mentioned things were within reach of him as a child (I don't believe he meant now as an adult).

" I can't do much than hoping you either don't have children or no child's responsibility is on you otherwise."

That's a strong statement to make. Implying he's unable to raise children because he'd like to see evidence that the internet actually has a negative influence on children.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#760

Post by alankay1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

mythz wrote: post #170

Do you still code today? If so what's your preferred language, editor, OS?

When I write code it is usually either "kiddicode" for future "kiddilanguages" or "metacode" (for future languages ".")

I did have a lot of fun last year writing code in a resurrected version of the Notetaker Smalltalk-78 (done mostly by Dan Ingalls and Bert Freudenberg from a rescued disk pack that Xerox had thrown away) to create a visual presentation for a tribute to Ted Nelson on his 70th birthday: https://youtu.be/AnrlSqtpOkw?t=135

This particular system was a wonderful sweet spot for those days -- it was hugely expressive and quite small and understandable (my size). (This was the Smalltalk system that Steve Jobs saw the next year in 1979 -- though with fewer pictures because of memory limitations back then).