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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

#31

Post by throeaweigh »

amasad wrote: post #24

I support this and find it really cool. However, I'd love to see less hero worship and more evidence. On its face there is nothing wrong with all those Alan Kay photos, but my feeling is that it's symptomatic of how much of what's being pursued rests on appeal to authority and/or nostalgia. To make this more concrete. Consider one of their projects ( http://harc.ycr.org/project/ ), the Block-based programming: what's…

but looking at just one of their projects is antithetical to harc

from Götz' writeup:

> Simply building prototypes with prototypes would not be a smart recipe for radical engineering: once in use, prototypes tend to break; thus, a toolset of prototypes would not be a very useful toolset for developing further prototypes. Bootstrapping as a process can thus only work if we assume that it is a larger process in which “tools and techniques” are developing with social structures and local knowledge over longer periods of time.

a lot of the ideas, or prototypes, in harc are half finished and or completely abandoned

sometimes an implementation's best contribution is the ancillary knowledge gained by attempting or developing

also, i think kay's presence is less 'hero worship' and more a reminder of shared goals(o) as well as a default standin

Götz's first contribution to a project in the space was to create an animation using cutouts from multiple copies of a picture of kay that were lying around

would you call lenna 'hero worship'?(i)

(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY

(i) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna

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

#33

Post by skadamat »

danblick wrote: post #19
skadamat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

You're right and my comment made it seem like everyone has some grudge or something. I think in general the PARC community was weary that the takeaways would be centered around how computers, GUI, etc. were great ways of doing old things better (accounting, reading text, etc) instead of being captivated by computing as a medium for thinking. This happened with print, as Alan has discussed in some of his talks. The first 100 years of print was used to print and distributed religious text and it took a while before ideas that could probably only sprout in the print medium were invented (physics, calculus, some philosophies, etc). To some degree, I think some people feel like we're still in the "use print for spreading religious text" phase (or the "film is a great way of recording & distributing plays" phase.

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

#34

Post by skadamat »

throeaweigh wrote: post #31
amasad wrote: post #24

I support this and find it really cool. However, I'd love to see less hero worship and more evidence. On its face there is nothing wrong with all those Alan Kay photos, but my feeling is that it's symptomatic of how much of what's being pursued rests on appeal to authority and/or nostalgia. To make this more concrete. Consider one of their projects ( http://harc.ycr.org/project/ ), the Block-based programming: what's…

but looking at just one of their projects is antithetical to harc from Götz' writeup: > Simply building prototypes with prototypes would not be a smart recipe for radical engineering: once in use, prototypes tend to break; thus, a toolset of prototypes would not be a very useful toolset for developing further prototypes. Bootstrapping as a process can thus only work if we assume that it is a larger process in which “…

Yeah this is spot on. The point of this kind of research is to discover how to frame the problem (we don't really know what it is yet) and create new contexts for thinking about computing. Under the lens of the current open problems in computing, their approach may seem odd, different, not grounded in evidence, etc. But like good art, good, foundational research provides new ways to think about the field entirely.

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

#35

Post by skadamat »

jarmitage wrote: post #23

On the "don't let the prototype out of the lab too early" theme, it would be interesting to read an alternative history novel about a world where the Mother of All Demos never happened. And Von Neumann never spoke about his architecture. Etc. What are some good examples of prototypes or even mediums in the sense discussed here that were "let out" at "just the right time" or "too late"?

It's definitely an interesting thought. To some degree, it's maybe impossible to avoid the filtering down / reductionism of a big vision, even if you wait until things are polished. I think the hope with the Mother of All Demos was to try to shift people's thinking about computing and try to change where efforts were directed. You could imagine researchers attracted to the vision, working on problems there, and eventually working with commercial partners (or doing it themselves) to solve some of the technical, scale, and other problems that occur when a research vision goes through the filter of reality.

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

#37

Post by sitkack »

throeaweigh wrote: post #31
amasad wrote: post #24

I support this and find it really cool. However, I'd love to see less hero worship and more evidence. On its face there is nothing wrong with all those Alan Kay photos, but my feeling is that it's symptomatic of how much of what's being pursued rests on appeal to authority and/or nostalgia. To make this more concrete. Consider one of their projects ( http://harc.ycr.org/project/ ), the Block-based programming: what's…

but looking at just one of their projects is antithetical to harc from Götz' writeup: > Simply building prototypes with prototypes would not be a smart recipe for radical engineering: once in use, prototypes tend to break; thus, a toolset of prototypes would not be a very useful toolset for developing further prototypes. Bootstrapping as a process can thus only work if we assume that it is a larger process in which “…

Prototypes increase understanding and discovery without an undo burden on making something operational. The parent comment strikes me as a, "do you even".

Is it hero worship or having a wise, hardened bad-ass on the team?

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

#38

Post by dang »

wtvanhest wrote: post #16
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For each of us there are good words we haven't seen before. That's lucky, since life would be duller otherwise.

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

#39

Post by dang »

laxatives wrote: post #17
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Quite possibly! But a bad article can contain a good word. I wanted to stand up for 'heterodox', first because words are my friends and I like my friends, and second because HN is a textual place and good English is part of the business here.

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

#40

Post by dang »

justin66 wrote: post #27
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I wonder if you can offer a pair of online dictionary definitions that illustrates what you see as the difference in meaning between the two words. (I bet you can't)

Look closely enough and you'll see that they all do. One meaning for 'heterodox' is 'holding unorthodox opinions'. That's an attribute of the person, not the opinion.

The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology, and there the difference is plain. Hetero = different, dox = opinion, ortho = correct. So the distinction here is something like "diverse opinion" vs. "incorrect opinion", which to me seems clearly meaningful.

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