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Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

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Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#11

Post by dang »

sushisource wrote: post #6

Not a comment on the content of the article, but I find it pretty obnoxious when an author uses a word like "hereodox" which has a much more commonly known nearly-exact synonym "unorthodox". It's hard to imagine any reason for that beyond "look at how clever of a writer I am".

Nearly-exact is definitely not exact. To my ear 'heterodox' connotes difference and pluralism while 'unorthodox' is more of a negation. (Of course other mileages may vary.) But different words always exist for a reason—if they didn't, one would have fallen out of use. Pretentiousness is not enough to keep a word alive!

Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#15

Post by skadamat »

laxatives wrote: post #12
icebraining wrote: post #3

The lab's list of projects: http://harc.ycr.org/project/

Of all the orgs to have a live demo, I would have guessed Bret Victor's lab to it. Still, looks pretty interesting.

They're rightfully waiting until they think things are ready to show. Danger of showing early is a recent memory in computing history (see Jobs / PARC visit)

Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#16

Post by wtvanhest »

dang wrote: post #11
sushisource wrote: post #6

Not a comment on the content of the article, but I find it pretty obnoxious when an author uses a word like "hereodox" which has a much more commonly known nearly-exact synonym "unorthodox". It's hard to imagine any reason for that beyond "look at how clever of a writer I am".

Nearly-exact is definitely not exact. To my ear 'heterodox' connotes difference and pluralism while 'unorthodox' is more of a negation. (Of course other mileages may vary.) But different words always exist for a reason—if they didn't, one would have fallen out of use. Pretentiousness is not enough to keep a word alive!

At risk of sounding foolish... I even read yours/his comments, and I am still confused.

I am fairly confident that I have never seen the word heterodox used before.

Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#17

Post by laxatives »

dang wrote: post #11
sushisource wrote: post #6

Not a comment on the content of the article, but I find it pretty obnoxious when an author uses a word like "hereodox" which has a much more commonly known nearly-exact synonym "unorthodox". It's hard to imagine any reason for that beyond "look at how clever of a writer I am".

Nearly-exact is definitely not exact. To my ear 'heterodox' connotes difference and pluralism while 'unorthodox' is more of a negation. (Of course other mileages may vary.) But different words always exist for a reason—if they didn't, one would have fallen out of use. Pretentiousness is not enough to keep a word alive!

The word aside, he's not wrong. That article is filled with flowery non-sense, making long prosaic paragraphs from thin-air. I like reading long articles, but this doesn't contribute much.

Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#18

Post by b_emery »

sushisource wrote: post #6

Not a comment on the content of the article, but I find it pretty obnoxious when an author uses a word like "hereodox" which has a much more commonly known nearly-exact synonym "unorthodox". It's hard to imagine any reason for that beyond "look at how clever of a writer I am".

Not sure if I agree with your assessment, but the author certainly loves the word - it appears in the article 5 times. Maybe it's a technical term with a precise, widely used definition in the ethnography field?

Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC

#19

Post by danblick »

skadamat wrote: post #15
laxatives wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the orgs to have a live demo, I would have guessed Bret Victor's lab to it. Still, looks pretty interesting.

They're rightfully waiting until they think things are ready to show. Danger of showing early is a recent memory in computing history (see Jobs / PARC visit)

From what I've heard of the Jobs/PARC visit I don't think I'd characterize it that way. In Walter Isaacson's "The Innovators" he says that Xerox had taken an ownership stake in Apple and some higher-ups decided to give them valuable tech.

Also, Alan Kay had a Quora answer on this:

https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-to-be-at-Xerox-PARC-w...

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