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Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

fastcompany.com

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Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#181

Post by thomastjeffery »

> let’s do what Sony did with the Walkman, let’s use this technology to make things more convenient in a way that a consumer can recognize, even if the user interface limits them.

That's a fantastic characterization of what I hate about Apple, and to contrast, what I love about free software.

The sad thing (in my opinion) is that people love the limitations Apple gives them. There it's no undefined behavior when the behavior is so arbitrarily limited. People don't want to create. They just want content. I find it rather depressing.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#182

Post by thomastjeffery »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #181

> let’s do what Sony did with the Walkman, let’s use this technology to make things more convenient in a way that a consumer can recognize, even if the user interface limits them. That's a fantastic characterization of what I hate about Apple, and to contrast, what I love about free software. The sad thing (in my opinion) is that people love the limitations Apple gives them. There it's no undefined behavior when the…

Also from the article:

> Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.” They’ve got simple things being simple and they have complex things being impossible, so that’s wrong.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#183

Post by bitwize »

yqwsqw wrote: post #151
bitwize wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Hackernews there was once a skeptic of postmodernism who got into a debate with a Derrida fan. The skeptic said "If deconstruction is not BS, how about you explain to us, in plain English, what it's all about." The Derrida fan replied "No. How about you demonstrate that you've read Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Levinas. Then we can begin to talk about Derrida." If Alan Kay were like the Derrida…

Well, he could implement the Dynabook. Why should others do it for him? Sounds like a lot of hand-waving to me.

That's what he was trying to do at Xerox and Apple.

Without the resources of a large company, the Dynabook will get Pyra levels of adoption and be quickly forgotten about. And no large company wants to take that kind of risk nowadays. Not when there's money to be made pushing "apps" and monetizing eyeballs.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#184

Post by thomastjeffery »

TuringTest wrote: post #30
pcl wrote: post #15

It's clear from the interview that Kay thinks mobile computing isn't where it should be. But I haven't studied the DynaBook. Does anyone know exactly what Kay thinks is needed, in order to realize his dream? I found a few such things in the article: - more-discoverable undo - some sort of AI-based virtual assistant - a stylus and holder, and presumably input methods and applications that are better suited for that st…

What's missing in today's software is described by the field of End User Development, the ability for normal people to craft new software artifacts without the need to learn a formal programming language. For most people, using computers means being force-feed a selection of existing applications; and most applications are pro- consumption, which is favoured by the media companies. App stores (and the Linux repositor…

I think the first step we can take toward "software artifacts" is modularization.

If each piece of functionality is a discrete module, the entire platform suddenly becomes both malleable and stable.

The best way to accomplish modularization is by using a functional design.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#185

Post by thomastjeffery »

jeffdavis wrote: post #129

Simplicity is closely related to education, and education is closely related to freedom. How are we supposed to take education seriously when we create devices of such complexity that they are essentially magic, and hand them to students? Before computers, complexity always had tight upper bounds. A watch could only get so complex before it wouldn't fit in its housing; and a car could only get so complex before it co…

The problem is not the complexity of a computer.

A child can learn complexity.

The problem is, in fact, limiting a computer's complexity.

The lower the barrier of entry for creation, the sooner one can learn to create.

The second problem is media.

You can use paper as a tool for media consumption, or for creativity. Media can come printed on the page. Creativity, however, requires a pen.

What Apple and others have done is create a platform that favors media consumption, and limits what a user's "pen" can do.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#186

Post by thomastjeffery »

jfoutz wrote: post #49
pmoriarty wrote: post #39

I kind of feel sorry for Alan Kay. He's trapped in endlessly rehashing ideas from 60's and 70's.

What new ideas are there though? Social networking I guess. Have you seen the mother of all demos? Engelbart's team invented, like, everything. On the programming side, dependent types maybe. Everything else is from ml or lisp. Neural networks are old old ideas as well. Computers have finally gotten fast enough to make use of the ideas.

> On the programming side, dependent types maybe.

Have you learned about monads yet?

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#187

Post by cma »

c3d wrote: post #123

I recognize the Alan Kay I met at HP. Very sure of his own genius and quick to snarkily dismiss the genius of others. Case in point: The iPad and iPhone makes kids creative like no other tool has before. Kids know how to use it to text, exchange ideas or pictures of kittens, draw or sketch, learn how to program (Swift Playground anyone), take and edit photos. It is everything but a glorified TV where kids are passive…

"This article was a surprise, because the interview was a few years ago for a book the interviewer was writing."

The interview probably predates Swift playground. Alan's critique was probably part of making it available, I heard it was part of why Scratch was eventually allowed.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#188

Post by shalabhc »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #184
TuringTest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's missing in today's software is described by the field of End User Development, the ability for normal people to craft new software artifacts without the need to learn a formal programming language. For most people, using computers means being force-feed a selection of existing applications; and most applications are pro- consumption, which is favoured by the media companies. App stores (and the Linux repositor…

I think the first step we can take toward "software artifacts" is modularization. If each piece of functionality is a discrete module, the entire platform suddenly becomes both malleable and stable. The best way to accomplish modularization is by using a functional design.

You seem to be describing the ideas underlying smalltalk, which uses the word 'objects' instead of 'discrete modules'. Every piece of functionality is an object - any object can talk to any other objects, etc.

If you're proposing something different, can you contrast your ideas with smalltalk style OOP?

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#189

Post by shalabhc »

mbrock wrote: post #62
david927 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem here, actually, but not in the way you think. There are alternatives (Canvas, SVG, etc.) but they're not as good for the standard use case of coming up with something quick that fulfills the business requirement. And then we need to recognize that that stack is a fucking abomination that should be burned with fire. It should so deeply embarrass us, that we wouldn't want to admit that we use it in p…

What should embarrass us so deeply and why? HTML and CSS are some of the most generative, enduring, and transformative technologies ever. I wouldn't fund anyone who doesn't recognize how great they are!

They're embarrassing once you realize what's been done in the past, with incredibly smaller 'stacks' in much simpler systems, producing more powerful capabilities.

HTML and CSS require that a large amount of information be pre-shared and implemented by different systems (i.e. all browsers need to implement ginormous standard with all subtleties). After all that, you don't even get much interactivity, you need Javascript.

A better design would be to share a tiny set of primitives that are designed to compose nicely and that can be used to build up much more powerful apps.

Re: Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

#190

Post by gone35 »

alankay wrote: post #145
austenallred wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this article is a pretty egregious misinterpretation of those points. I didn't come away with anything even vaguely resembling what you just said, even if we disregard the factual errors. Candidly, your comments here make a lot more sense than some "We haven't yet built the DynaBook the way we should" piece.

People often ask me "Is this a Dynabook, is that a Dynabook?". Only about 5% of the idea was in packaging (and there were 2 other different packages contemplated in 1968 besides the tablet idea -- the HMD idea from Ivan, and the ubiquitous idea from Nicholas). Almost all the thought I did was based on what had already been done in the ARPA community -- rendered as "services" -- and resculpted for the world of the chi…

9:05-12:30 I'm sold. A mindblowing vision for what the universality of computation can truly do... Thank you.
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