151–160 of 202 posts
The best thing about this website is that it was made in Dynamicland, which is the most bootstrapp-y & Dynamicland thing ever: https://x.com/worrydream/status/1831035663703212350
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I assume his point is that he's not going to be able to execute on all his ideas anyway, so why not make them free to people who might? If the idea succeeds, the benefit to him is a better world, while the cost is nothing. It's a positive-sum proposition, what's not to like?
> If the idea succeeds, the benefit to him is a better world, while the cost is nothing. It's a positive-sum proposition, what's not to like? I am unaware of any of the ideas having been picked up and productized. I might be mistaken. However, if I'm correct, then the thing that could be better is picking ideas that have a high chance of being selected, everything else being equal.
I'm hopeful VR programming with standardized programming languages and AI will create a Dynamicland-like software environment one day. Social spatial programming just needs to be made fun like building in a game.
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>In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values there's something ominous, weird, and sort of damning about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent. If Dynamicland offered a truly novel computing paradigm, it should be one that is accessible by other cultures. I…
Yes-ish, I somewhat agree with your critique. I think it's a temporary measure though. It is very America-centric and that's very sad to me. I think Bret is a bit hesitant to share the stuff before people understand what it is, to prevent the same problem that happened when Jobs visited PARC and walked away with the idea of "we need to build computers with the desktop metaphor", without understanding at all that it w…
Can you expand on this, or share some links so I can learn about it? I've not heard the story framed like this before. I'm interested to learn "what we missed out on" as a result of "visual metaphors" becoming overemphasised in the public mind.
I spent quite a lot of time at Dynamicland Oakland. It's great fun and the people are just wonderful. I think of Realtalk as adding another layer to programs, the Physical Layer. Program behavior can be determined and controlled by physical layout as well as code. It's not completely unlike a frontend/backend distinction, and in fact you could make a Realtalk simulator using a javascript canvas much more easily than…
> I'd love to see them explore (wait for it...) using AI. Well, you know what, whenever someone invents such a thing, it would be great. But it doesn't exist yet and there's good reason to think it never will. What is 100% certain is that LLMs are not intelligent and never will be. They are just very good at producing totally stupid, mindless output that convinces some people it's real and was produced by humans. It…
Very cool. I do believe physical embodiment of computers is the future and the current screen/GUI paradigm will decline, but the embodiment will be different. The physically embodied computer of the future will be a humanoid robot, and we will interact with it the same way we do with humans: by gesturing and speaking. There will always be a place for screens, just as there is still a place for books, but we will have…
I feel that mobile screens and AR are going to be the future
Very cool. I do believe physical embodiment of computers is the future and the current screen/GUI paradigm will decline, but the embodiment will be different. The physically embodied computer of the future will be a humanoid robot, and we will interact with it the same way we do with humans: by gesturing and speaking. There will always be a place for screens, just as there is still a place for books, but we will have…
I feel that mobile screens and AR are going to be the future
Most people with programming skills prefer the command line interface. The advantage of integrating computation and design into the real world is increased accessibility and ease of learning.
However, after selling my LightForm projector and all AR/VR equipment in pursuit of similar novel solutions, I can confidently say I now prefer workflows that are contained within a small device I can carry in my pocket and stow away when done.
My preferred interface is simply an easy button.
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Without Smalltalk, there would have been no HyperCard, and HyperCard definitely succeeded in that goal to a significant degree. It's a pity there's never been a modern reboot with the right factors aligned to continue that work.
https://www.beyondloom.com/decker/index.html
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 are unsurmountable.
Decker is a love letter to the HyperCard which was. But if HyperCard had survived as a product, today's version wouldn't look anything like that.