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

31–40 of 40 posts

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

#31

Post by nbzso »

Hnus wrote: post #10
KnobbleMcKnees wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I adore notion and will unironically shill it for them at any appropriate moment. so, er, yeah. GET NOTION.

I don't get how people can use notion for personal info or basically anything else if you are not forced to use it at work. Not even considering that your most personal information (journal, health log etc.) you don't share anywhere else twitter, facebook is stored in plaintext somewhere and can be used however they want according to their privacy policy which some nothing-to-hide folks might ok with but that everyth…

People want a modern and cool tools with bangs and whistles. They 'have nothing to hide', they trust 'SaaS' as a collective agreement on "advancement' and 'inevitable mandatory future'.

Corporations want data and control over UX. I see this as a happy relationship between owners with knowledge and slaves with lack of survival instinct.

I can accept some form of work related security risk (Hi, Figma) but in general cannot give my intellectual property and businesses processes on any third party. In my company all the process tools are strictly FOSS and under my control.

Personally speaking, tools as Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every 10 years just to feel "cool" and "modern".

But hey it's a business, they have happy users and money whats more to ask for? Right?

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

#32

Post by radiowave »

rektide wrote: post #27
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…

steve yeggie's politican axis of software development comes hard to mind. https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 at work yeah, we all naturally want a very defensive, safe, territory. we dont want volatility & risk in our running, cash making systems. it might be helpful to reflect on thr lifecycles of software development. Pioneers, settlers, & town planners comes to mind as a useful model, of the changing approach…

An interesting dynamic here is that, having read Yeggie's article years back, I regarded Smalltalk as being somewhere towards the conservative end of the axis (at least, in comparison to other dynamic languages.) E.g.: variables declared before use, no truthiness, very few automatic type conversions. It results in a system with a high degree of internal consistency.

And yet, the goal of the language is to enable activity at the liberal end of the axis.

So maybe there's a more subtle goal: you have to enable someone to make a mess, but also equip them to get out of that mess into something more structured, as and when that becomes useful.

As a counter example, spreadsheets are wonderful for making a messy solution to certain kinds of problems - but how do you then it them into a spreadsheet that isn't a mess? I don't know that I've ever seen that happen - it seems like the right means of abstraction and combination to enable that to happen just don't exist in spreadsheet-land.

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

#33

Post by Austin_Conlon »

neilv wrote: post #30

> There are so many more rabbit holes I would have liked to go down, but I think we're at our time now. So, thank you so much Alan for coming on the show. This was really fun. If Alan Kay willing to keep talking, why not keep him talking? You could turn it into a two-parter for whatever the show format is.

Although Quora seems widely disdained here, I’d recommend asking him any follow-up questions there, where he’s pretty responsive.

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

#34

Post by cdrini »

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…

Oh I very strongly resonated with that! This was one of the two quotes I wrote down from the interview. One thing I notice when I see artists works or when I'm working on an artistic project of my own is that the project is absolutely ugly for 80% of the process. It takes a lot of changing, tweaking, adjustments, and sometimes also an unreasonable amount of fine detail work to get something that looks good; and then a ton more work to get something that looks great. That's what he means by "mess" I think; all projects should start as a mess, and develop/grow/iterate into something more beautiful.

I find programmers tend to operate less iteratively, and more like engineering, where you need to come up with a good solution before implementing it, because in engineering you can't undo, and costs are high to make changes after a certain point. The analogy I like is: programming is often compared to engineering/construction, but is perhaps better represented by gardening; it's got a much more organic nature and flexibility.

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

#35

Post by igouy »

radiowave wrote: post #32
rektide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

steve yeggie's politican axis of software development comes hard to mind. https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 at work yeah, we all naturally want a very defensive, safe, territory. we dont want volatility & risk in our running, cash making systems. it might be helpful to reflect on thr lifecycles of software development. Pioneers, settlers, & town planners comes to mind as a useful model, of the changing approach…

An interesting dynamic here is that, having read Yeggie's article years back, I regarded Smalltalk as being somewhere towards the conservative end of the axis (at least, in comparison to other dynamic languages.) E.g.: variables declared before use, no truthiness, very few automatic type conversions. It results in a system with a high degree of internal consistency. And yet, the goal of the language is to enable acti…

"LAMBDA: The ultimate Excel worksheet function"

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ult...

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

#36

Post by uxcolumbo »

nbzso wrote: post #31
Hnus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how people can use notion for personal info or basically anything else if you are not forced to use it at work. Not even considering that your most personal information (journal, health log etc.) you don't share anywhere else twitter, facebook is stored in plaintext somewhere and can be used however they want according to their privacy policy which some nothing-to-hide folks might ok with but that everyth…

People want a modern and cool tools with bangs and whistles. They 'have nothing to hide', they trust 'SaaS' as a collective agreement on "advancement' and 'inevitable mandatory future'. Corporations want data and control over UX. I see this as a happy relationship between owners with knowledge and slaves with lack of survival instinct. I can accept some form of work related security risk (Hi, Figma) but in general ca…

> Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow

More details on this? Anywhere I can read up on this.

I like your principle - not to trust these SaaS tools with your personal data.

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

#37

Post by nbzso »

uxcolumbo wrote: post #36
nbzso wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want a modern and cool tools with bangs and whistles. They 'have nothing to hide', they trust 'SaaS' as a collective agreement on "advancement' and 'inevitable mandatory future'. Corporations want data and control over UX. I see this as a happy relationship between owners with knowledge and slaves with lack of survival instinct. I can accept some form of work related security risk (Hi, Figma) but in general ca…

> Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow More details on this? Anywhere I can read up on this. I like your principle - not to trust these SaaS tools with your personal data.

>Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative.

https://www.slant.co/versus/8769/15790/~org-mode_vs_notion

There are a thousand reasons to invest in Emacs and org-mode. It is a personal choice. I like the speed and extendability. It is serious investment and requires remapping of ideas and habbits. But the last thing that I will part of are Emacs and Kynesys Advantage.:)

Company-wise I choose to use this: https://joplinapp.org/

You can always learn about Org-mode: https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/

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

#39

Post by [deleted] »

radiowave wrote: post #32
rektide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

steve yeggie's politican axis of software development comes hard to mind. https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 at work yeah, we all naturally want a very defensive, safe, territory. we dont want volatility & risk in our running, cash making systems. it might be helpful to reflect on thr lifecycles of software development. Pioneers, settlers, & town planners comes to mind as a useful model, of the changing approach…

An interesting dynamic here is that, having read Yeggie's article years back, I regarded Smalltalk as being somewhere towards the conservative end of the axis (at least, in comparison to other dynamic languages.) E.g.: variables declared before use, no truthiness, very few automatic type conversions. It results in a system with a high degree of internal consistency. And yet, the goal of the language is to enable acti…

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by rektide »

radiowave wrote: post #32
rektide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

steve yeggie's politican axis of software development comes hard to mind. https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150 at work yeah, we all naturally want a very defensive, safe, territory. we dont want volatility & risk in our running, cash making systems. it might be helpful to reflect on thr lifecycles of software development. Pioneers, settlers, & town planners comes to mind as a useful model, of the changing approach…

An interesting dynamic here is that, having read Yeggie's article years back, I regarded Smalltalk as being somewhere towards the conservative end of the axis (at least, in comparison to other dynamic languages.) E.g.: variables declared before use, no truthiness, very few automatic type conversions. It results in a system with a high degree of internal consistency. And yet, the goal of the language is to enable acti…

Fun comment! What are some things you think that Smalltalk does have or does do that embody the liberal sides of the axis? I want to agree, but trying to describe the image based environment, or how being more messages helps, is challenging for me to elaborate on.

Personally, I think we grade really hard on the small but visible differences like "do I have to declare 'MyFoo foo' or is there inference typing &c about", but it's much harder to assess from a big picture what behaviors & differences there are, harder to understand how each language & runtime is going to help us make sense of things.

Spreadsheets are an interesting place to turn to next. I'd be interested to see spreadsheets that can also visualize the dependencies of cells, that show how values flow across the sheet. Having that positional sense is interesting, versus, say, a debugger where you can see maybe what lexical scope a value is from, or less interestingly the address on the heap where a value happens to be. There's still, in both spreadsheet & debugging, dependencies, which power the processing that is now underway. I feel like both environments could be much better at helping explore this.

Post reply on HN