[deleted]
Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
141–150 of 193 posts
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having an environment such as one Victor styled for big systems (big as in millions of lines of code), would prove unfeasible (hell auto-complete has a hiccup when lines start getting into hundreds of thousands). Those tools he proposes seem to be very beginner and RAD oriented (even if he claims otherwise). I've seen IDE's choke on smaller code bases and this not only has auto-complete, auto-update but also state/fr…
Why do systems need millions of lines of code? If you can build a complete operating system + major programs in 20,000 lines of code, what system should need a million? http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008004_steps08.pdf (They're not quite down to 20,000 yet, but they're getting there)
No one said they need millions lines of code. However a large "enterprise" application have a way of growing like cancer. This tool won't be particularly useful for such codebases.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#143There's already two comments here about being "harsh" or "ungracious" towards Khan Academy which is ridiculous. The usual HN article that contains criticisms is usually limited to that. Some rant that took 10 minutes to write and contains nothing constructive. Bret Victor put an insane amount of time into this (I can only assume) and is truly advancing mindsets about programming tools and learning. We should all be t…
Here's my issue with the "advancement" that Bret is doing. It's all conjecture. He has no product. He has no users. He has theories. Theories that sound good to you and me, but, ultimately, theories that are untested and unproven. There's no evidence that any of these changes would actually help anyone learn to program any better. Who is to say that a person new to coding wouldn't be overwhelmed by the amount of info…
Khan Academy and Bret Victor are apples and oranges -- they're not even playing the same game. In order to make any major strides, we have to reconcile the need for PRODUCTS, NOW! with the conceptual, exploratory approach taken here.
Real world innovation often makes very small tweaks on proven formulae, whereas bold new ideas can have a long incubation period with seemingly little payoff at first. It's roughly the difference between business and research. While it's not possible to "test" these bare assertions in the sense you imply, they can certainly be argued for and against. And he makes a rather compelling case for it, certainly a more nuanced one than much of the criticism here on HN.
In any event, he's begun sharing some of his code (I believe) and products like Light Table are emerging that appear to draw from very similar inspiration, if not his work directly. It would appear these ideas are gaining some traction.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self is certainly one. http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/programming-... But why do you think liveness requires visual programming? I see them as pretty much orthogonal. Separately, when I see "visual programming language" I see "unusual programming language". When language features become normal (like 2D syntax in Python/haskell), then we stop calling them visual. A great deal of visual features are ju…
Why would you call Self a visual language? It has an IDE, but the language is most definitely textual. Its only when you throw in Morphic does the line begin to blur, but you are back to text again if you want to write any code. Many languages we think of as visual are more structured or graphical (graphics baked around text); compare ToonTalk to Scratch! Most languages fall somewhere in a spectrum between heavily vi…
I haven't actually used Self, but from reading the paper, discussion of embodiment, tangible objects, and direct manipulation makes it interesting from a visual perspective.
Personally I think all computer languages are textual by definition, and vary in the amount of extra visual support for syntax and more often secondary notation. The Reactable perhaps pushes beyond this limit by making proximity and orientation part of the syntax, but still is basically about composing textual symbols.
If we're doing that thing, I wrote a chapter on this in my thesis :) http://yaxu.org/thesis/
[ For the benefit of any others, here's a link to Sean's preprint: http://lamp.epfl.ch/~mcdirmid/mcdirmid07live.pdf ]
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#145Sometimes, you come across something with such an astonishing level of insight, that it is as if it must have been dropped off by aliens ... because it is so far ahead of the typical thinking in its field.
This is like that.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you call Self a visual language? It has an IDE, but the language is most definitely textual. Its only when you throw in Morphic does the line begin to blur, but you are back to text again if you want to write any code. Many languages we think of as visual are more structured or graphical (graphics baked around text); compare ToonTalk to Scratch! Most languages fall somewhere in a spectrum between heavily vi…
I haven't actually used Self, but from reading the paper, discussion of embodiment, tangible objects, and direct manipulation makes it interesting from a visual perspective. Personally I think all computer languages are textual by definition, and vary in the amount of extra visual support for syntax and more often secondary notation. The Reactable perhaps pushes beyond this limit by making proximity and orientation p…
But that aspect of Self comes mostly from Morphic. Anyways, Self/Morphic were a huge inspiration on my own work. There are deeper distinctions between textual and visual; think a Van Goh painting vs. a book by Steven King. They say "a picture is worth a thousands words," but actually, the worths are not very comparable. Text is much better at expressing abstractions than visuals are, which is why most VPLs mixin some text (though their are pure VPLs like SketchPad and ToonTalk).
I skimmed your thesis a few months ago; lots of good work there! But I think we are a bit out of whack on our world views (arts vs. PL), which is why we might not be talking on the same page.
Thanks, I forgot about the DigitalLibrary link :p. If someone is just looking for related work, better to try http://lamp.epfl.ch/~mcdirmid/mcdirmid07dead.pdf (smaller download as it doesn't embed quicktime movies).
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#147"In Processing... There are no strong metaphors that allow the programmer to translate her experiences as a person into programming knowledge. The programmer cannot solve a programming problem by performing it in the real world."
We all learn to read at a very early stage in our lives. What is a real world metaphor for a letter? For a syllable? Or, taking an example from the article, what's the metaphor for a timeline? Or for time itself for that matter. I'm sceptical that having a metaphor matters that much.
Also, I yet have to see any evidence that kids who start with Smalltalk learn programming faster than those who start with basic, or pascal, or anything else. There is frustratingly almost no case studies in this area.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#148Beautiful and inspirational, and yet... Sometimes becoming able to hold the 'invisible state' in memory is the skill to learn. Consider the 'dual N-back' drilling which seems to improve working memory, and then also (by some studies) other testable fluid intelligence. The whole point is holding more and more hidden state in your mind. (To 'show the state' would defeat the purpose of the game.) Similarly, sometimes st…
"Consider some studies that show noisy, hard-to-read text (as on a
poorly-printed copy) is better remembered by readers than clean
typography. Apparently, the effort of making out messy printing also
strengthens the recall."
In the book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' studies are presented, that the number of right answers increases if the question is harder to read.
The conclusion is, that if you need more effort and consciousness to comprehend a question, than you are already in a mode of thinking which makes it easier to reach the right answer.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#149"Processing's lack of modularity is a major barrier to recomposition"
JS has functions and objects. How is that not modular? The fact that many Khan Academy's example programs "are written as one long list of instructions" is another story.
Re: Bret Victor: Learnable Programming
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't actually used Self, but from reading the paper, discussion of embodiment, tangible objects, and direct manipulation makes it interesting from a visual perspective. Personally I think all computer languages are textual by definition, and vary in the amount of extra visual support for syntax and more often secondary notation. The Reactable perhaps pushes beyond this limit by making proximity and orientation p…
But that aspect of Self comes mostly from Morphic. Anyways, Self/Morphic were a huge inspiration on my own work. There are deeper distinctions between textual and visual; think a Van Goh painting vs. a book by Steven King. They say "a picture is worth a thousands words," but actually, the worths are not very comparable. Text is much better at expressing abstractions than visuals are, which is why most VPLs mixin some…
Yes we are probably talking past each other here a little, but I enjoy and respect your work on SuperGlue. Not having used Self I don't understand the distinction between it and Morphic.
There clearly is a distinction between textual and visual, but at the same time they support one another: text is made out of pictures, pictures can be described with text (e.g. svg). For me the aim of visual programming language research shouldn't be to disparage or get away from the composition of symbols, but to supplement that with mental imagery. As I see it, mental imagery and language are most valuable in combination.
I'll look into sketchpad and toontalk properly though, "truly" visual language is a fascinating area.