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Alan Kay’s reading list

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Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#21

Post by justlearning »

frossie wrote: post #11
jodrellblank wrote: post #5

One thing I've been pondering lately, is the more general purpose of reading books. I used to read quite a lot of books, library books and personal books. Mostly fiction and popular science, I hesitate to admit (not hesitate to read them, just hesitate to admit because they are 'lesser' books). There are a lot of things that I couldn't tell you whether I have read or not, let alone what the main points were. Now I mo…

Am I really a better person for having read more books? For having been exposed to certain ideas? Yes. Even if you can't directly recall what you have read, if you understood it while you were reading it you would have internalised some of the world view, if not the blow-by-blow account. As somebody else replied, discussing it with your friends (or, making friends of the people who would discuss such books with you)…

Yes. Even if you can't directly recall......not the blow-by-blow account.

Thank you! I believe this is applicable to everything that is related to the dominating senses -see/hear. So i try my hardest to narrow my information overload. I have accepted the fact, that i can't know everything - politics..knowing why situation in iran came to be,why this vocal outburst doesn't happen in other places...to feeling like the dumbest guy after looking into google research papers.

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#22

Post by giardini »

Alex3917 wrote: post #17
jodrellblank wrote: post #5

One thing I've been pondering lately, is the more general purpose of reading books. I used to read quite a lot of books, library books and personal books. Mostly fiction and popular science, I hesitate to admit (not hesitate to read them, just hesitate to admit because they are 'lesser' books). There are a lot of things that I couldn't tell you whether I have read or not, let alone what the main points were. Now I mo…

What I do to avoid this is whenever I read a book I put a little dash in the margin next to anything that's worth remembering, and then after I finish the book I copy down all these sentences into a mindmap. The means that I've read all the insightful/informative parts at least twice, typed them once, and then have them in a format that makes it really easy to refer back to them.

What sort of mindmap do you use?

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#23

Post by dca »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #4

It's striking how broadly engaged Kay is with the world. He finds ideas, problems and inspiration everywhere. To know how to write a program, all you need to know is APIs, algorithms, and tools. But to design breakthrough software - to know what program to write - it obviously helps to also be broadly engaged with the world.

I find it also striking how long he's been like that. He's truly an icon.

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#24

Post by Alex3917 »

giardini wrote: post #22
Alex3917 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do to avoid this is whenever I read a book I put a little dash in the margin next to anything that's worth remembering, and then after I finish the book I copy down all these sentences into a mindmap. The means that I've read all the insightful/informative parts at least twice, typed them once, and then have them in a format that makes it really easy to refer back to them.

What sort of mindmap do you use?

http://freemind.sourceforge.net

I'm using .9RC4 right now, it's great. The only problem is that the flash exporter doesn't seem to be working with Firefox 3.5RC1, but that's a Firefox bug so who knows when it'll get fixed. It worked fine until this week, and it still works in Safari and every other browser :-/

If you want to see an example map check out http://www.alexkrupp.com/earth.html

The only caveat is that some of the default appearance preferences are a little wonky in the .9 release. I'd recommend turning on full antialiasing, and checking the box that says "Edges start from one point at root node." (And turning off the text editing box at the bottom unless you are going to use it.)

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#25

Post by GHFigs »

jodrellblank wrote: post #5

One thing I've been pondering lately, is the more general purpose of reading books. I used to read quite a lot of books, library books and personal books. Mostly fiction and popular science, I hesitate to admit (not hesitate to read them, just hesitate to admit because they are 'lesser' books). There are a lot of things that I couldn't tell you whether I have read or not, let alone what the main points were. Now I mo…

A very lightweight and simple way of improving retention is to re-expose yourself to the ideas. If you're reminded of a book, go flip through it again and read whatever bit strikes you at the moment. Just enough to satiate your interest, but not so much that you feel like you have to re-read the whole thing again. I like this because it's purely interest-driven. The books that plant the most seeds in your mind will draw you back the most, and consequently get the most re-read, and the get the most retention.

Just as you can remember the words to a song better when you hear the tune, you'll find that just reading a few pages of a book can reactiviate your recollection of the rest of the contents, you find that you remember much more than you thought you did. Another nice thing is that by re-exposing yourself to things you read before, you can connect them to things that you've read or ideas you've had since then. Connections that you couldn't have made the first time start forming. This, too, helps retention. It also feels good.

Not all books are great for this. Pop science books, as entertaining and informative as they can be, can frequently be summarized on a napkin without much loss. They tend to have one big idea and lots of details. The ones that work best are books packed with ideas, the ones that you finish on first reading knowing that you haven't fully wrapped your head around.

Incidentally, all of the books on Kay's list that I have read happen to be of this kind. I think that bodes well for the rest.

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#27

Post by jballanc »

Oh man...I was totally with him until I saw "Selfish Gene". Please, speaking as an evolutionary biologist, don't read that book. Dawkins oversimplifies the important and complicates the obvious. If you want a good book on an analytical approach to evolution, might I recommend "Evolutionary Dynamics" by Nowak in its place.

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#28

Post by jhancock »

jodrellblank wrote: post #5

One thing I've been pondering lately, is the more general purpose of reading books. I used to read quite a lot of books, library books and personal books. Mostly fiction and popular science, I hesitate to admit (not hesitate to read them, just hesitate to admit because they are 'lesser' books). There are a lot of things that I couldn't tell you whether I have read or not, let alone what the main points were. Now I mo…

7 or 8 years ago I read the Book "In the Pond" - Ha Jin. Its a story of a Chinese man that pushes against society and gets his butt handed to him countless times. While reading it, I didn't appreciate the subtle wisdom I would gain from many years since of reflecting on it while living in China.

Re: Alan Kay’s reading list

#29

Post by david927 »

jacobolus wrote: post #6
michael_nielsen wrote: post #4

It's striking how broadly engaged Kay is with the world. He finds ideas, problems and inspiration everywhere. To know how to write a program, all you need to know is APIs, algorithms, and tools. But to design breakthrough software - to know what program to write - it obviously helps to also be broadly engaged with the world.

Some part of this is that Kay is more concerned with cognition and learning, and especially in children, than he is with computer programming as such. Programming happens to be a uniquely exciting way to engage with mathematics, and computers happen to be wonderful tools in many types of learning, so he has devoted of his career to inventing programming environments and interfaces for kids. Because all programming –…

I think he understands many things we'll only recognize much later, and one of these is that kids need clarity. (Not simplicity; people talk down to kids all the time.) And clarity is orthogonality, it's structure, it's everything we need in our funny little industry and nothing we have.

There are 20 people I admire in this field and the first seven are Alan Kay.

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