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

881–890 of 931 posts

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#881

Post by bpchaps »

heurist wrote: post #602
tomp wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of changes to your thought processes did you make?

First of all, I now enjoy talking about myself :) I stopped assuming I knew everything, and a childlike sense of wonder returned to my life. I began looking beyond what was directly in front of me and sought out more comprehensive generalizations. What do atoms have in common with humans? What does it mean to communicate? Do we communicate with ecosystems? Do individuals communicate with society? What is consciousnes…

This is almost exactly my experience! I don't think HN talks about it much, but cannabis is a great way to approach intuitive depth on subjects. For me it was ego, math, music, civics and information theory concepts.

When I started, it was at a job that I absolutely hated (rewriting mantis to be a help desk system), and it helped me get out of it by opening up better understanding of low level systems. That eventually led to high frequency trading systems tuning and some pretty deep civics using Foia.

Not that it was a direct contributor, but I do consider it a seed towards better understanding of the things around me. I don't necessarily feel happier, but I feel much more content.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#883

Post by kurenainogrey »

That was an elucidating dialog; and I have appreciated watching recordings of your lectures as well.

I realize I am replying a bit after the fact, so I am writing more on the off chance that you may read this rather than further the dialog. It seems unlikely that I will have an opportunity to directly collaborate with you given the present realities of my existence, but I deeply appreciate your contributions to the field of computing and education and for sharing your knowledge and wisdom.

Kind regards and sincere thanks.

｜ グ レ ェ

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#884

Post by dang »

krmboya wrote: post #863
dang wrote: post #808

This is one of the best threads HN has ever seen and we couldn't be more thrilled to have had such an interesting and wide-ranging discussion. I know I'm not the only one who will be going back over the wealth of insights, ideas, and pointers here in the weeks to come. Alan, a huge and heartfelt thanks from all of us. The quality and quantity (over 250 posts!) of what you shared with the community surpassed all expec…

Thanks to all who made this happen. It was really mind bending trying to parse and understand both the questions and responses, like simultaneously traveling to both the past and the future of computing. Since then all other HN threads have felt so lightweight, and it is just now that that feeling is starting to wear off..

We should find a way to mine some of the rich veins of discussion here—perhaps picking one thing and going into it in more detail. Every time I read or hear Alan I end up with a list of references to new things I'd never heard of before.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#885

Post by npm83 »

alankay1 wrote: post #733
mmiller wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've found about the web, as it exists, is that the people who set up a system for the outside world to use change it over time. The URLs change. The CGI their service will accept changes. As things exist now, a program must use "sticky" names, and if a name changes, all of a sudden the connection is broken, even though the exact same functionality still exists. It would be good if a program could find the…

Hi Mark Actually, this is not quite true about Smalltalk code (which is linked to its class). But referring to things is also done via variables and selectors of various kinds, and these are names which have to be locally known. Smalltalk can also find quite a few things by description (for example it can find things like the "sine function" via examples of inputs and outputs).

> it can find things like the "sine function" via examples of inputs and outputs

I really like the idea, and reading through comments this question came to my mind.

Names are important for us. They synthesize what a "thing" is, and they help us organize knowledge.

So even though it might be true that for computers names are not that important (i can describe what i want), i believe they are for us, humans, when trying to understand a given system.

We grow systems both for humans and for computers.

What's your take on this? How would you find balance between the two?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#886

Post by nnq »

alankay1 wrote: post #508
nnq wrote: post #431

Hi Alan, the question that troubles me now and I want to ask you is: Why do you think there is always a difference between: A. the people who know best how something should be done , and B. the people who end up doing it in a practical and economically-successful or popular way? And should we educate our children or develop our businesses in ways that could encourage both practicality and invention? (do you think it'…

We were lucky in the ARPA/PARC communities to have both great funding, and the time to think things through (and even make mistakes that were kept from propagating to create bad defacto standards). The question you are asking is really a societal one -- and about operations that are like strip mining and waste dumping. "Hunters and gatherers" (our genetic heritage) find fertile valleys, strip them dry and move on (th…

So you're rephrasing the question to mean that you see it as 'hunter gatherer mode' thinking (doing it in a practical and short term economically-successful way) vs. 'civilized builder mode' thinking (doing it the way we know it should be done) and that they are antagonistic, and that because of the way our society is structured 'hunter gatherer' mode thinking leads to better economical results?

This ends up as a pretty strong critique of capitalism's main idea that market forces drive the progress of science and technology.

Your thinking would lead to the conclusion that we'd have to find a way to totally reshape/re-engineer the current world economy to stop it from being hugely biased in favor of "hunter gatherers that strip the fertile valley dry" ..right?

I hope that people like you are working on this :)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#887

Post by npm83 »

alankay1 wrote: post #816
npm83 wrote: post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im afraid I'm missing the point about "sending processes rather than messages". The modularity thing sounds pretty much to well designed objects to me, but it seems that you're trying to make a difference between that and processes. What do you have in mind or, better said, which could be a concrete example of it?

The question is whether a "message" has enough "stuff" to reify into a real process (so it can help interpretation and negotiation) or whether the receiver has to do all the work (and thus perhaps has to know too much for graceful scaling of the system).

I know I'm stuck in a box here. The other way around would be:

- what if we cant send processes instead of messages? - what are we missing? - which things cannot be done?

Pretty much what we have nowadays.

I find it hard to understand how sending processes (assuming they're not only objects but the context in which they live) help scaling the system.

Which example are you thinking of, that i cannot because I'm lacking this idea of processes rather than messages?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#888

Post by pefimo »

richhickey wrote: post #880
mmiller wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what Alan was getting at is that what you see as "data" is in fact, at its basis, just signal, and only signal; a wave pattern, for example, but even calling it a "wave pattern" suggests interpretation. What I think he's trying to get across is there is a phenomenon being generated by something, but it requires something else--an interpreter--to even consider it "data" in the first place. As you said, there a…

If we can't agree on what words mean we can't communicate. This discussion is undermined by differing meanings for "data", to no purpose. You can of course instead send me a program that (better?) explains yourself, but I don't trust you enough to run it :) The defining aspect of data is that it reflects a recording of some facts/observations of the universe at some point in time (this is what 'data' means, and meant…

Why do you limit the meaning of 'data' to facts and/or observations?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#889

Post by saluk »

gnaritas wrote: post #646
mdahlstrand wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience is it's not as much "seeing" as "feeling" whatever I "see". Like with open eyes staring at but not looking at something, instead mentally focusing on peripheral, where the peripheral is more of an idea than the impression of photons hitting your retina. I often almost feel like I'm drawing the diagrams or interfaces I might think of, with sweeping gestures and so on. I definitely think it's som…

Sure, but most people have actual visuals when they imagine, most with color. That's where I want to get.

I mean, I CAN have visuals like that, as I don't have aphantasia. But I don't believe most of my ideas originate from the visual imagining. It usually starts with concepts, is connected through logic, and then along the way images may or may not be generated, depending on what I am ruminating about.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#890

Post by DonHopkins »

icarito wrote: post #420
DonHopkins wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related question: in your opinion, what were the successes and failures of the OLPC project, what openings and obstacles contributed to that, and where do we go from here? I've studied the Sugar design and source code, and programmed Sugar apps and widgets, including wrapping the X11/TCL/Tk version of SimCity [1] in a thin Sugar python script wrapper to make it into an activity, working on reducing the power consum…

That's not one question, that's four. I am familiar with your port and found it unplayable on the XO laptop (although I commend you on your apparently painful task of making it run in the first place!). While I appreciate your thoughts on the OLPC, I am more interested in Alan's thoughts on Sugar. Nice to meet you. Sebastian

It's great meeting you, and wonderful getting some honest feedback from somebody who's used it. Thank you! I also hope Alan has a chance to answer your question, and my four.

Could you please tell me more specifically about what made it unplayable for you? What was the nature of the problem? Did you remember to disable disasters? ;)

Please don't blame it on Sugar -- the user interface was based on a 1993 version of TCL/Tk, so it looks pretty klunky since it was designed to emulate Motif, whose widget design (according to Steve Strassman) is from the same style manual as the runway at Moscow International Airport [1].

Here's a demo of SimCity running on the OLPC [2] -- does that show any of the problems you had that made it unplayable?

Once it passed EA's QA regime, I didn't put any more effort into the TCL/Tk user interface, instead refactoring it to remove TCL/Tk and plug in other GUIs. Have you given the pure GTK/Cairo interface a try?

What was totally unplayable was the X11 based multi player feature [3], which I removed from the OLPC version, since no child should be forced to wrangle xauth permissions on the command line, and David Chapman's MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 tutorial isn't suitable for children [1]. I also disabled the Frob-O-Matic Dynamic Zone Finder [3 @ 3:35], since that was a prank I played as a tribute to Ben Shneiderman [4].

Again, thanks for the feedback, which I appreciate!

[1] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disast...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpKhh10K-j0

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8XY9430fM

Post reply on HN