Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

notion.so

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 40 posts

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#11

Post by mkr-hn »

yesenadam wrote: post #9

Such a great interview! Or rather, pontification: > See, what I'm doing here is I'm not conversing. I really can't converse very well at my age because I've lost my patience. So, what I do is pontificate, which is the same as giving you something like it's written. > This is why experienced programmers have big multiple screens. They're working on something where the result is going to be fit on one screen, but you h…

"If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend." - Richard P. Feynman

The mislink is probably a rushed final editing pass.

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#12

Post by lincpa »

The "object-oriented programming" has no mathematical model support. So it cannot prove its scientificity.

My "The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model" is based on the simple, classic, and widely used in social production practice, elementary school mathematics "water input/output of the pool" as a mathematical prototype, Therefore, it is scientific.

https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#13

Post by locallost »

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess.

I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that reimplement stuff that already exists have this schtick about making it correctly, clean and efficient. He was mostly working on things really new so it had to be a mess. I just hate that the stuff I work on is a mess anyway even though it's nothing special at all.

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#14

Post by rjsw »

yesenadam wrote: post #9

Such a great interview! Or rather, pontification: > See, what I'm doing here is I'm not conversing. I really can't converse very well at my age because I've lost my patience. So, what I do is pontificate, which is the same as giving you something like it's written. > This is why experienced programmers have big multiple screens. They're working on something where the result is going to be fit on one screen, but you h…

Most of the transcripts of computing interviews that I see could use some proofreading by people who know the subject.

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#15

Post by radiowave »

locallost wrote: post #13

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that re…

It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#16

Post by [deleted] »

radiowave wrote: post #15
locallost wrote: post #13

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that re…

It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.

[deleted]

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#19

Post by ssivark »

radiowave wrote: post #15
locallost wrote: post #13

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that re…

It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.

Because for the PARC folks from back in the day, the true vision for personal computing was to enable lots of people to do new things. That’s why Kay laments that the personal computing revolution is yet to happen.

Re: Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

#20

Post by TeMPOraL »

radiowave wrote: post #15
locallost wrote: post #13

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that re…

It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.

Now let's apply that insight to the subproblems of your problem. And then to the subproblems of those subproblems.

The way I see it, the tools we use to program - all the way from IDEs through programming languages to the very way we code in plaintext - make the process too damn slow, the feedback loop way too long. Messing around, trying and modifying and retrying until you get something good, it all takes too long, so we hardly do it.

Post reply on HN