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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

#61

Post by DonHopkins »

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…

Several years ago I gave a talk at HAR2009 about my work applying Constructionist Education ideas to SimCity, which explains how I collaborated with the OLPC project to open up and publish the SimCity source code as free software, and translate Papert's and Kay's philosophy into concrete goals and features:

HAR 2009 Lightning Talk Transcript: Constructionist Educational Open Source SimCity, by Don Hopkins.

http://micropolisonline.com/static/documentation/HAR2009Tran...

Chaim Gingold, who also works at HARC, discussed my work open sourcing SimCity and his own work analyzing and using the source code to teach game design, in his PhD thesis on Play Design:

Open Sourcing SimCity - excerpt from Chaim Gingold’s PhD dissertation on Play Design, University of California Santa Cruz, June 2016.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DNAvqvKsuLGih8dWz9feEjea...

Abstract: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=ABS

PDF Viewer: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1806122688.html?FMT=AI

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

#62

Post by petra »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #56
sgentle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important not to let pragmatism wander into anti-intellectualism. "pedagogy, psychology, and mathematics" are all well-defined terms with non-bullshit meanings. Montessori, Papert and Bruner are well-known names whose theories would be familiar to anyone with a background in learning theory. McLuhan (the "medium is the message" guy) is similarly well-known in media circles, and if you want to understand why Alan…

Agreed, with regard to the quote about Montessori, Papert and Bruner, I don't have the necessary background knowledge to truly evaluate the statement. The terms "pedagogy", "psychology" and "mathematics" are very broad though - not meaningless, but nearly so in this context. If you say somebody combined teaching in general, theories of human thinking in general, and mathematical reasoning in general, that's too broad…

I think there are a few things in play that affect Kay's behavior, since he is a basic researcher:

1. He needs grants. Grand theories and "bullshit" sell at that context.

2. Basic research isn't a tool to gain working systems. It's a tool to gain knowledge, including negative knowledge. And to some extent a fair way to judge a basic researcher is "What have you tried? How seriously did you try it?".

And yes, even though i think Kay is definetly full of himself, He does achieve to do ambitious and interesting basic research(like the VPRI steps program, trying to build a full compute stack ala windows in 10K LOC via DSL's).

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

#63

Post by DonHopkins »

germinalphrase wrote: post #32

Victor has indicated that his Realtalk group[0] at HARC is trying to release new research by the end of the year - so maybe we won't have to wait too long before learning a little more than this article provides. [0] https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/

I recently asked Brett:

"It's such a delight to introduce somebody to your work for the first time! I’m mentoring somebody at work in the ways of user interface design, and I just linked him to your classic “Magic Ink” article, and I am indulging myself by reading it again. You’ve written so much since then, that I have a lot of catching up to do. Any suggestions where I should start?"

He referred me to these two articles: "If you're looking for something of mine to read, I'm partial to this one and this one."

http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/

http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/

And here's a "secret internet video" (oops! ;) which Brett shared, "which doesn't really talk about what we're working towards but maybe gives some flavor of the material we're working with. (You might notice Chaim Gingold in a few shots -- the table with pinball etc. was his project.) Here's a vague description of the current system under development."

http://worrydream.com/oatmeal/realtalk-tech-teaser-2017-02-2...

https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/

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

#64

Post by DonHopkins »

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.

Have you tried deconstructing it?

http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: My Postmodern Adventure

by Chip Morningstar, June 1993

"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman

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

#65

Post by jarmitage »

Cybiote wrote: post #53
jacobolus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we assume that all of Piaget’s theories about developmental timelines are bunk, how does that invalidate the concept of teaching constructively in a child-centered, problem-centered way? Those seem like mostly orthogonal concerns. As for block-based programming: that seems like something we can test empirically, and indeed there’s quite a bit of literature about it (which I have not read and am not familiar w…

I was directly replying to the asked question. But, it is not just the developmental timeline that was off. There's also its hypothesis of what children learn and how they reason or what they are capable of that is inaccurate. Child centered, problem centered is vague. More practically, the big things are: you want material that's novel to the learner but also somewhat familiar (this is true, regardless of age). Chil…

Thanks for your replies, which intuitively make sense and appear to come from a knowledgeable background. As in my question I would really like to read the peer-reviewed / field leading work that you're basing your statements on, same as the comment I replied to. Or even just names of people / labs / journals to search.

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

#66

Post by DonHopkins »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
dang wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology No, it's not. Etymology tells you where a word came from, not what it means (either in denotation or connotation) in current usage. It will often be completely misleading in trying to unpack subtle differences in meaning.

How is heterodoxophobia more nuanced than literally meaning being afraid of different opinions?

http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2010/05/homodoxuals-and-hetero...

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

#67

Post by DonHopkins »

pvg wrote: post #51
dang wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The royal road to clarifying subtle differences in language, however, is etymology, and there the difference is plain. Is it? (to either of those things). In current English usage, 'unorthodox' doesn't mean 'incorrect' and doesn't connote 'incorrect'.

Etymology be damned: I'm still trying to figure out if he meant "royal" as in "Royale with Cheese" or "royal" as in "royal pain in the ass".

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

#68

Post by DonHopkins »

dcre wrote: post #7
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".

I find it obnoxious when a commenter whines about a single word in the first line of a long article. It's hard to imagine any reason for that beyond "look at how good of a complainer I am".

I think he was trying to be ironic by being picky and pedantic about the exact meaning of a word, while spelling it wrong at the same time. I took it as a successful attempt at self deprecating humor, by criticizing "clever writers" while ignoring the squiggly red line his spelling corrector drew under the word he was talking about.

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

#69

Post by DonHopkins »

justin66 wrote: post #26
wtvanhest wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's because it means exactly the same thing as "unorthodox" and almost everyone simply says that. Hence the discussion - you aren't alone.

When given the choice of a naming a variable notSomethingDescriptive or somethingElseDescriptive, I always choose the positive name, because it's easier to understand in logical expressions, and reduces double negation. It's better to describe what something is, instead of what it's not. So unOrthoDox is more negative (and more complex) than heteroDox, because it begins with the prefix "un".

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

#70

Post by lgas »

wslh wrote: post #57
QuadrupleA wrote: post #50

What a bunch of of vague, hand-wavey nonsense (the article, not necessarily the HARC lab, I couldn't make heads or tails of what they actually do). Covers up its lack of clear thinking with an attempt to sound profound and obfuscatory in every sentence, like many academic articles. Also full of weird typos and misspellings (e.g. "mid 1970ties", "most currently available imaginaries about technologies"). I love Bret V…

I never saw the source code of Photoshop but propably uses OOP...

You can download it here: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/adobe-photoshop-source-...
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