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Dynamicland 2024

dynamicland.org

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Re: Dynamicland 2024

#191

Post by justin66 »

enneff wrote: post #174
justin66 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I’m WAY more likely to misunderstand what it’s about through reverse engineering it than I would be if I had actual source code I could study. What a low opinion you have of yourself. On the contrary, you're likely to learn a lot more (and of course, spend orders of magnitude more time) recreating something interesting from the ground up than you are simply copying the source code. The source code isn't the int…

Hell you might even make something better, which is I suspect one of the unstated reasons why the source is not released.

I can't tell if you're serious.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#192

Post by samatman »

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #170
samatman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Decker is just wonderful, but it's retro. That isn't a criticism of it at all, that's what it wants to be and I don't think it should try to be something else. But it isn't what I meant. A HyperCard reboot would be a modern GUI builder with a deck-of-cards drag-drop metaphor, deployable as desktop, browser, and mobile apps for any platform. Mobile poses some problems, particularly iOS, but I don't think those…

Decker runs natively on a variety of platforms as well as on web browsers, and it fully supports touch devices like tablets. It isn't designed with small cellphones in mind, but I'm told that it's quite usable on phones that include a stylus. Just as touch support has improved over time, I have some ideas for providing a degree of fluid layout in the future without onerous impositions on deck authoring. Decker is not…

It's great work what you've done, and as I said, I have no criticism of it at all.

But it's more than a distinct aesthetic, it is a distinctly retro aesthetic. Modern means contemporary, more than it means fashionable (sometimes retro aesthetics are in fashion, after all).

But terminological nuance is not very important here. The fact remains that, as wonderful as it is, Decker is not what I meant, and I don't think you're trying to make it into that either. For one thing you'd need a rather large marketing budget.

But to be sure, I wish you all success, whatever that might mean to you. If that includes transforming Decker into something which looks and feels like HyperCard might today, if Jobs hadn't put it out to pasture when he did, then more power to you.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#194

Post by yellowapple »

max-ibel wrote: post #122
sedatk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that’s why my HP inkjet refuses to print a black & white page when it’s low on yellow.

If you are happy to live with B&W printing for your untraceable printing needs, maybe you can fill the yellow cartridge with clear ink (not sure if water is OK). But then, how do B&W laser printer allow for tracing ?

> But then, how do B&W laser printer allow for tracing ?

They don't, because they don't need to. The point of the yellow dots is to prevent the printing of counterfeit currency, which itself tends to require the use of more ink colors than only black. It's probably possible to refill a "black" ink/toner cartridge with the exact shade of green (or whatever) to replicate the color of a currency note, but if it was easy to do then there'd probably be a lot more counterfeit bills floating around.

The ink/toner is also half the battle. The other half is the paper, since obviously the US Treasury doesn't use ordinary printer paper to print $20 bills. The usual trick is to take a $1 or $5 bill, bleach it (or otherwise remove the existing printing), and print a $20 bill design onto it - but that's easier said than done, due to both the ink/toner color issue mentioned above and due to the difficulty of getting the donor bill exactly aligned (and doing so again, in the exact same way, for the other side of the bill).

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#195

Post by yellowapple »

While Dynamicland/Realtalk and its ethos have tended to strike me as... pretentious, to say the least, the 2024 video has a key quote that really resonates with how I've been thinking about software lately:

"Anything you can make an interpreter for is a program."

Thinking of data not as something to be processed by code, but as code in and of itself, is one of those mindsets that pops up independently in various circles, but a lot of mainstream programming styles and tools and techniques seem to be borderline antithetical to that sort of mindset. I think the recent renaissance-of-sorts of AI might help contribute to making code/data equivalence more mainstream, since that seems to be how your average AI model operates: as a bunch of neurons that encode code and data as a single blob. Unfortunately, that "blob" tends to be opaque and inscrutable; I wouldn't be surprised if the next big leap in software engineering coincides with bringing data-as-code-friendly programming environments into the mainstream, such that said inscrutable blobs could be made, well, scrutable.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#198

Post by cellis »

sigmonsays wrote: post #49
bsimpson wrote: post #44

For those unfamiliar, the founder is Bret Victor. He made a name for himself working on human interfaces at Apple in the Steve Jobs iPad era. In 2012, he gave a couple of influential talks: Inventing on Principle, and Stop Drawing Dead Fish. Bret's take on being a visionary/futurist is fascinating. He imagines the near-future world he wants to live in, prototypes enough of it to write a talk about, and gives the talk…

that approach seems so off... i'm curious how it's justified. like countless hundreds of quotes on execution vs ideas, here is one: "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." anyways, i'm gonna spend a little more time this evening to really dig in.

Elon Musk has certainly been made very rich from ideas alone.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#199

Post by krapp »

cellis wrote: post #198
sigmonsays wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that approach seems so off... i'm curious how it's justified. like countless hundreds of quotes on execution vs ideas, here is one: "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." anyways, i'm gonna spend a little more time this evening to really dig in.

Elon Musk has certainly been made very rich from ideas alone.

No... teams of people had to execute on those ideas first, usually with far more valuable ideas of their own, as well as teams of engineers and employees to make them a physical and profitable reality. He didn't simply manifest his ideas from the aether like an arcane sorcerer.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#200

Post by cellis »

krapp wrote: post #199
cellis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk has certainly been made very rich from ideas alone.

No... teams of people had to execute on those ideas first, usually with far more valuable ideas of their own, as well as teams of engineers and employees to make them a physical and profitable reality. He didn't simply manifest his ideas from the aether like an arcane sorcerer.

He has delivered on many things, and not delivered on many other ideas. It’s just that the things he didn’t deliver ( the vision ) helped him sell stocks as well as cars, via fame.
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