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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]

#101

Post by infinite8s »

morphle wrote: post #97
infinite8s wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the work from the STEPS project seems to have disappeared, especially the Frank software he used in some talks. That looks like it would have been very interesting to play with.

I have most of the Frank/STEPS code still running. I posted a lot about it before on HN. Yes, its a lot of fun to play with it, I invite people to join in the fun. 20.000 Lines of code for almost all of personal computing.

Thanks, do you have any of it publicly available or would you prefer an email?

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

#102

Post by infinite8s »

kragen wrote: post #99
infinite8s wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bret Victor's DynamicLand seems to be a direct descendent of many of these ideas. RealTalk's reactive DB combines Linda tuplespace ideas with LISP 71 pattern matching and reactive semantics. Each Realtalk object is self contained and can't be 'messed with' externally. It's all introspective and reconfigurable, etc

yes, agreed. you may or may not be aware that bret was a principal investigator at yc harc, along with vi hart, dan ingalls, john maloney, yoshiki ohshima (who posted this video), and alex warth, at least three of whom were at vpri. yc harc was sorta kinda headed by alan kay https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/harc

Yep, was definitely aware. It just seems like of all the projects at HARC, this is the only one that branched out from Alan's earlier ideas. The set of papers on https://worrydream.com/refs/ gives a good idea of some of the inspirations behind DL.

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

#103

Post by morphle »

infinite8s wrote: post #101
morphle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have most of the Frank/STEPS code still running. I posted a lot about it before on HN. Yes, its a lot of fun to play with it, I invite people to join in the fun. 20.000 Lines of code for almost all of personal computing.

Thanks, do you have any of it publicly available or would you prefer an email?

Not all is publicly available and most needs recompiling and explanation. I prefer email.

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

#104

Post by morphle »

asolove wrote: post #36
nanna wrote: post #5

Wonderful as ever. Kay demonstrates an emulator of Sketchpad. Anyone know if it's been shared anywhere?

Also very curious about this. I’ve been slowly building one myself and would happily give up if another good one already exists. Tried searching the web and can’t find it.

There was a CDClabs github version and the Frank/STEPS code. Contact me, its burried in my 20 TB archive.

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

#105

Post by kragen »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #80

It's sad to see that despite Alan Kay's lamentations, not a single comment mentions Doug Englebart or the fireflies to be found. Especially on a forum for a startup accelerator, it seems like that should have been the most intriguing part of the talk.

i'm not quite sure what he meant by the fireflies, but i did comment a bit on work (largely led by kay) on, in a significant sense, continuing engelbart's efforts, and on interesting new areas to explore https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618408 and on interesting new things in formal methods in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39622073

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

#106

Post by coldtea »

infinite8s wrote: post #92
coldtea wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That describes a limitation of computers (and current interfaces to them) though. Requiring humans to describe stuff "unambiguosly" is the easy cop out to that. Getting computers to handle the ambiguity and resolve it as good as humans is what would be really amplifying. LLMs are a good step to that, compared to a regular programming language/interface.

It's also a limitation of human-human communication, and why nation's have ambassadors (who presumably have a shared context from which to start from when dealing with a foreign nation).

I don't think diplomacy and ambassadors are there to handle ambiguity in communication.

There are there to handle conflicting interests and goals.

To that end, ambiguity in communication is something they use on purpose, not something they're there to solve.

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

#107

Post by coldtea »

gjvc wrote: post #84
coldtea wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence We tried that, and it worked briefly. But the end result is the modern web/app landscape: commercialization, tits and cats, hating, techo-feudal and government control, partisanship bs, spam, narcisism - and rare sprinkles of intelligence here and there.

We tried that, and it worked briefly. Where and when?

In the early days of the internet up to the early years of the web.

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

#108

Post by hdarshane »

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.

>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.

That "programming language" might just be ability to have generative interfaces (LLM based).

>Humans communicate mainly with language and no OS provides this in a satisfactory way for the average user. LLMs literally fix this.

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

#109

Post by hdarshane »

djmips wrote: post #10
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…

I feel like the LLM interface will enable that. I wonder what Alan Kay makes of the current LLM revolution (he does talk a bit about it in the question section @ around 1:35)

I'm not Alan, but I'm pretty sure he isn't too happy about it.

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

#110

Post by danielovichdk »

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…

"computer solutions should be task specific". Sums it up perfectly
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