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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#761

Post by alankay1 »

rjurney wrote: post #306

How satisfied are you with the tablets that finally satisfied your vision (did they?) of a personal computer? How much were you able to infer about how they would work? Any lessons from this?

I'm not satisfied. They have more computing power and display resolution and depth than my minimums back then, but don't pay strong enough attention to "services" (one of the simplest they don't do well enough -- and they could -- is to really allow a person who knows how to draw to draw (and this means allow a person who doesn't know how to draw to learn to draw)).

There are a lot of similar quite blind spots in today's offerings, and none of them are at all necessary.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#762

Post by alankay1 »

arloc wrote: post #536

Hi Alan, Can you confirm that a message is a declarative information sent to a recipient which can (or can not) react to it? And what is your opinion about inheritance in OOP? Is it absolutely essential feature in an OOP language?

I like "messages" as "non-command" things. And I left out inheritance in the first Smalltalk because I didn't think Simula's version was semantic enough (and still don't).

The idea of a "generalization" from which you can get instances is good. Now the question -- then and now -- is how can you define the "generalization". We didn't do it well back then, and I don't know of a system that does this well enough today.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#763

Post by alankay1 »

amasad wrote: post #338

Hi Alan, You've been involved in visual programming environments like GRAIL and Etoys for kids. What do you think of the current state of visual programming for both kids and adults?

I wasn't involved in GRAIL, but was (and am) a huge admirer of what these people were able to do (and when they were able to do it). Worth really looking into the history here!

The current state of programming (visual or not) for children and adults is not good enough.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#764

Post by gkya »

nkassis wrote: post #759
gkya wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ch…

I interpreted his message as he did not only want evidence for the internet, but also the other stuff I mentioned, and their effects on kids. I'm sorry if that wasn't the case.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#765

Post by alankay1 »

lispython wrote: post #492

Hi Alan, Comparing how you think about doing research now with how you thought when you were starting out, what is the biggest change in your thinking?

I had the great -- and lucky -- benefit of falling into a well established research community -- ARPA-IPTO -- in the 60s with roots going back into the 50s and 40s. They "knew how to make progress" and I learned most of what little I understand about "process" from growing up in it.

Here is a little tribute essay I wrote for this research community in 2004: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2004001_power.pdf

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#768

Post by alankay1 »

lispython wrote: post #495

Hi Alan, Have you ever made serious mistake? That if given an opportunity, you would start over with a different approach.

"Most ideas are mediocre down to bad" -- and mine certainly have been.

Beyond ideas, I would do some process things differently, especially those that could have been done better if I had been able to understand people better.

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