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Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

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Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#51

Post by nomilk »

e12e wrote: post #34
nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

From the sibling link, I'd highlight: Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas at TED (2007) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_A_powerful_idea... Alan Kay: Normal Considered Harmful (2009) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_Normal_Consider... Back to the Future of Software Development (2003) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Back_to_the_Future_of_Sof... All of the STEPS reports - I especia…

Thanks a lot for this (and to other posters). 20 minutes into Normal Considered Harmful and can tell I'm going to binge watch/listen to Kay over the next few weeks. Extremely appreciative.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#52

Post by ProllyInfamous »

nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC

This follows Alan Kay (as well as dozens of others) through their groundbreaking research at Xerox's research lab in Palo Alto, primarily during the 70s.

You will learn how these visionaries and personalities were largely at war with themselves, while HQ (2,000 miles away) largely ignored any of their marvelous outputs... until it was too late.

----

I just checked this morning, and was shocked to see that XRX's total market cap is "only" $2B, when they could have been Apple computer [today ~$2,600B].

An interesting tidbit that many don't know about the Xerox/Apple relationship was that Steve Jobs was allowed into the facility, on two separate tours, because he offered Xerox preferred stock in the then-upcoming Apple IPO — which they then held on to for less than a few years.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#53

Post by djmips »

6510 wrote: post #17
nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

The funniest to me was when he was 5 he read about 150 books: "I hit first grade, and I already knew the teachers were lying to me"

I read more books before I was 12 than I read between 12 and 20... I certainly shared his dismay for what I was being taught.

(and I have consumed less (books) each decade. :/)

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#54

Post by cmrdporcupine »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12
d_tr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first-class programming language (not an LLM) to talk to the computer's OS along with a rich library is the most important missing component IMO. Humans communicate mainly with language and no OS provides this in a satisfactory way for the average user. The result is users mostly clicking on signs to choose among predetermined tasks, like monkeys in a lab.

That's because computers are dumb servants. And that's a good thing, because computer solutions should be task specific. The human has agency and sometimes imagination, and the computer's job is to solve a problem as transparently as possible with as little cognitive load as possible. Human language is optimised for human relationships , not for task-specific problem solving. It's full of subtext, context, and implic…

Yes, the machine should be a humanity-amplifier, not a humanity-replacement.

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Frank Herbert, Dune

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#55

Post by igouy »

angiosperm wrote: post #40

There are sound reasons why no substantial system in common use is coded in Smalltalk. Kay could have spent the decades since his time at PARC figuring out why, and remedying them. One of the reasons is that O-O is just one of several important ways discovered to organize software. Any big enough problem will have places for each. Specialization is for insects.

"Rudolph Technologies Helps Semiconductor Customers Reach Market Faster with Smalltalk-Based ControlWORKS"

https://www.cincom.com/pdf/CS050418-1.pdf

Someone suggested Smalltalk a million lines long which I have no way to confirm or contradict ;-)

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#57

Post by runevault »

d_tr wrote: post #11
boxfire wrote: post #4

The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence is really what sticks out to me as the best way to frame what interacting with a computer means. It's not new but Alan did a great job of motivating and framing it here. Thanks for posting this great reminder that what we use as computers today are still only poor imitations of what could truly be done if we can transport our minds to be more d…

A first-class programming language (not an LLM) to talk to the computer's OS along with a rich library is the most important missing component IMO. Humans communicate mainly with language and no OS provides this in a satisfactory way for the average user. The result is users mostly clicking on signs to choose among predetermined tasks, like monkeys in a lab.

to my mind at least part of the issue here is human communication languages are fundamentally lossy by nature. Everything has too many meanings and requires inference. This is why when able to communicate with code it gets so much easier because it has to be exactly right or the computer fails. And at least because it is consistent we can debug and fix that communication and once that is done it will work with reasonable consistency.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#58

Post by incanus77 »

pjmlp wrote: post #50
angiosperm wrote: post #40

There are sound reasons why no substantial system in common use is coded in Smalltalk. Kay could have spent the decades since his time at PARC figuring out why, and remedying them. One of the reasons is that O-O is just one of several important ways discovered to organize software. Any big enough problem will have places for each. Specialization is for insects.

The reason is called Java, and having all key Smalltalk vendors pivoting into Java. Smalltalk was the ".NET" of OS/2, and Visual Age for Smalltalk code browser still lives on Eclipse. Then there are those Objective-C and Ruby developers still around, heavily influenced from Smalltalk.

I recently got back into Objective-C (first did in 2002) doing some (for hire) framework work on an app that was built in it originally. And it's very refreshing! I've done a lot of C in between then and now, and I almost have to keep reminding myself that it's C under the hood, really.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#59

Post by borgensfeld »

boxfire wrote: post #4

The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence is really what sticks out to me as the best way to frame what interacting with a computer means. It's not new but Alan did a great job of motivating and framing it here. Thanks for posting this great reminder that what we use as computers today are still only poor imitations of what could truly be done if we can transport our minds to be more d…

[flagged]

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#60

Post by bitwize »

justin66 wrote: post #14
nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

He actively answers questions on Quora and those answers come in a format (short length - though his are unusually well thought out - and narrow focus) that is easy to browse.

He's been known to answer questions and leave comments right here on Hackernews: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=alankay
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