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Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

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Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#51

Post by jkscm »

darkmighty wrote: post #33
tsunamifury wrote: post #11

I think software engineer and the fundamentals of coding have always had a bias towards those who can conceptualize ideas in the abstract, then build with the assumptions that those concepts are happening regardless of their ability to see them. This is fine, except that it limits those who need to tinker in order to find out how those concepts work. When the elements are visually recognizable and physically manipula…

I can't tell if everyone one is like that (I assume not), but I am extremely reliant on visualization, and I suppose Bret is also. I believe profoundly on it's power partly because it's the only way I can really get things done properly, which is why those tools resonate so much to me. I have a friend however that shudders every time I mention making programming more visual. I mean, If I'm not visualizing something,…

But maybe our intuition is wrong here:

"Hundhausen and colleagues found that how the visualizations were used matters a lot. For example, using visualizations in lecture demonstration had little impact on student learning. But having students build their own visualizations had significant impact on those students’ learning." p.118

Oram, Andrew, and Greg Wilson. 2011. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It. Farnham; Cambridge: O’Reilly.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#52

Post by yorak »

greggman wrote: post #36

I love Bret Victor's talks, blog posts, etc. They're super inspiring. 2 things came to mind though. 1. It seems, possibly, the exact wrong time to make rooms with giant displays. With things like Google Glass and Oculus Rift as first gen (2nd?) VR/AR you could project all of that info virtually and cheaply and be able to have all the visualization he describes wherever you are, not just at a makerspace that only a fe…

> the system tries every setting and graphs the results so it's easy to pick out the best setting. How would that happen? How does the system know what "good" is?

In a research field of Parameter Tuning we try to answer that question. The field is more focused to optimizing algorithm parameters, but it could be applied to physical world of robots etc., if it is feasible to automatically repeat the experiment few dozen to around hundred times.

If we would do like Bret proposed, by logging each experiment we would already have done some "probing" on the parameter space. This, in turn, would allow us to build a statistical model of the phenomena and then minimize/maximize on that. The resulting parameter configuration would then be evaluated, the model updated and the process repeated until satisfactory level of performance was reached.

See for example the recent works from Hutter et al. [1], where they use Random Forests with parameter tuning to make parameter "goodness" predictions (in order to reduce the actual experiments on the target algoritm/robot/whatever).

[1] http://www.cs.ubc.ca/labs/beta/Projects/SMAC/

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#53

Post by blahber »

ColinDabritz wrote: post #9
mrspeaker wrote: post #2

Every time I realize I'm guessing about (rather than directly seeing) the behavior of my code I think of Bret's talks. I never actually improve my workflow, but at least now I'm angry about it!

Interesting. I frequently think back to his talks and use it as a framework to guide my approach especially when debugging. I think about what I can see, and what I can't, and try to address what I can't see. This process has broken through many bugs that seem challenging until they are visible.

/optimistic

I think debuggers are under appreciated by Open Source languages(as in, it's not THE priority). An approach I am forced to use is heavy log statements and a DEBUG flag, so that I can feel the program show me what it's upto.

I think Bret's ideas are worth pondering on. The only issue when dealing with the philosophical idea of time, I find for myself, is that it's an easy rabbit hole to fall into.

Nice interesting paper tangentially related to this, http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011001_final_worlds.pdf

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#54

Post by sambeau »

GuiA wrote: post #21
loup-vaillant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's… horrible. It feels like he's under a gag order. I wager this stuff could be useful to all of us, but Apple just clings on this "Intellectual Property" like, like… Well, like any corporation.

Huh...? He worked for a company out of his own will, and that company paid him in exchange for his work, with the full understanding that all ownership of the work would go to them. I mean, it's not even as if Apple hides that about them- that's one thing they tell you OVER and OVER when you interview with them. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he accepted to work for them (and did so for many years), an…

   he got out of it (salary ...
This is an argument I've heard many employers use that is factually incorrect.

Every month, employees freely give their time to a company. The company is in debt to the employee. At the end of that month there is a financial reckoning and the debt is repaid. The moment the employee comes to work the following day the company is debt to the employee again.

I cannot stress this enough - for the whole month it is the Company that is in debt and should call itself lucky, not the employee.

It is employees that keep the economy going - not employers - as, at the end of each month billions have been lent to Companies by those who work there.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#55

Post by nathell »

sambeau wrote: post #54
GuiA wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh...? He worked for a company out of his own will, and that company paid him in exchange for his work, with the full understanding that all ownership of the work would go to them. I mean, it's not even as if Apple hides that about them- that's one thing they tell you OVER and OVER when you interview with them. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he accepted to work for them (and did so for many years), an…

he got out of it (salary ... This is an argument I've heard many employers use that is factually incorrect. Every month, employees freely give their time to a company. The company is in debt to the employee. At the end of that month there is a financial reckoning and the debt is repaid. The moment the employee comes to work the following day the company is debt to the employee again. I cannot stress this enough - for…

Not necessarily; that depends on one's particular arrangements. I, for example, get paid approximately mid-month, so I start out indebted to the company each month and the balance gradually shifts over time.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#56

Post by gajomi »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #30

Some of this is extremely similar to Jun Kato's research. http://junkato.jp More specifically see phybots: http://junkato.jp/phybots/ Kato leverages the overhead camera trick in this system, though in a bit different way. See "A Toolkit for Easy Development of Mobile Robot Applications with Visual Markers and a Ceiling Camera:" http://junkato.jp/publications/uist2009-sakamoto-andy.pdf

Thanks for the excellent link. I only took a quick look, so maybe the information is somewhere on the site, but do you know if this person (or others) are doing similar work for robots in 3d?

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#57

Post by vanderZwan »

jkscm wrote: post #51
darkmighty wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if everyone one is like that (I assume not), but I am extremely reliant on visualization, and I suppose Bret is also. I believe profoundly on it's power partly because it's the only way I can really get things done properly, which is why those tools resonate so much to me. I have a friend however that shudders every time I mention making programming more visual. I mean, If I'm not visualizing something,…

But maybe our intuition is wrong here: "Hundhausen and colleagues found that how the visualizations were used matters a lot. For example, using visualizations in lecture demonstration had little impact on student learning. But having students build their own visualizations had significant impact on those students’ learning." p.118 Oram, Andrew, and Greg Wilson. 2011. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Bel…

The Pharo guys are working on that:

https://vimeo.com/channels/ndc2014/97315968

Starts slow, but gets really interesting (disclaimer: I'm a biased interaction designer in this regard, I love this stuff) halfway in.

Pharo might actually become a very good fit for Victor's idea of a big-screen "seeing room" debugging environment, now that I think of it - combine it with some of Victor's idea of drawing dynamic visualisations[1] it would probably be a great environment for creating tools on the fly, and the "everything is an object" model is fitting for the tinkering-mentality of the maker space.

[1] https://vimeo.com/66085662

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#58

Post by knowaveragejoe »

greggman wrote: post #36

I love Bret Victor's talks, blog posts, etc. They're super inspiring. 2 things came to mind though. 1. It seems, possibly, the exact wrong time to make rooms with giant displays. With things like Google Glass and Oculus Rift as first gen (2nd?) VR/AR you could project all of that info virtually and cheaply and be able to have all the visualization he describes wherever you are, not just at a makerspace that only a fe…

I think display are, for now, the better option. AR and VR are still far too in their infancy for them to be as intuitively useful as a room full of displays is to NASA or a power grid operations team(per his example). That will change with time of course, but for something we can do now and over the next few years I think displays and projectors are the way to go. In a way, the projectors over the worktable he shows are(in effect) a limited form of augmented reality.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#59

Post by saint-loup »

tsunamifury wrote: post #11

I think software engineer and the fundamentals of coding have always had a bias towards those who can conceptualize ideas in the abstract, then build with the assumptions that those concepts are happening regardless of their ability to see them. This is fine, except that it limits those who need to tinker in order to find out how those concepts work. When the elements are visually recognizable and physically manipula…

I think there's an important misconception about Victor's works and ideas. Augmenting human intellect is not only about visualization, it's about gathering and merging symbolic, interactive and visual representations in a single tool. He brought this point in this conference†, quoting research from Jerome Bruner ††. He shows the example of an electric circuit. Increasing some value on a resistance and seeing the change reverberating on all the plots is equally symbolic, interactive and visual.

† http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable

†† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bruner

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#60

Post by chrisdevereux »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #19
3rd3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idealism appears to be one reason why he left Apple: http://worrydream.com/Apple/

That's… horrible. It feels like he's under a gag order. I wager this stuff could be useful to all of us, but Apple just clings on this "Intellectual Property" like, like… Well, like any corporation.

The really sad thing is how many great ideas must get forgotten because they were developed in secret and didn't align with the commercial interests of the company paying for it.
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