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Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

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Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#21

Post by jimmySixDOF »

djmips wrote: post #10
boxfire wrote: post #4

The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence is really what sticks out to me as the best way to frame what interacting with a computer means. It's not new but Alan did a great job of motivating and framing it here. Thanks for posting this great reminder that what we use as computers today are still only poor imitations of what could truly be done if we can transport our minds to be more d…

I feel like the LLM interface will enable that. I wonder what Alan Kay makes of the current LLM revolution (he does talk a bit about it in the question section @ around 1:35)

I am a big fan of just in time on the fly UI and LLMs seem to make that possible now with some of the fast token outputs there are a couple of experiments [1]using image for now and I expect this to be more useful in not too long.

[1] https://twitter.com/sincethestudy/status/1761099508853944383...

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#22

Post by theGnuMe »

justin66 wrote: post #14
nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

He actively answers questions on Quora and those answers come in a format (short length - though his are unusually well thought out - and narrow focus) that is easy to browse.

He's been here on HN as well in the past.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#23

Post by kragen »

6510 wrote: post #17
nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

The funniest to me was when he was 5 he read about 150 books: "I hit first grade, and I already knew the teachers were lying to me"

he elaborates on how concepts and ideas and schooling are misleading by nature quite a bit in the talk, though if he says that sentence i haven't gotten to it yet. (i've seen him say it elsewhere)

https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=8m33s 'our minds are like theaters. (...) we treat our beliefs as reality. that is the worst thing about human beings. and these theaters are tiny; we can only think of a few things at once, it's hard for us to take in larger things. (...) we grow up in whatever culture we were born into. (...) our conclusions tend to be societal—that's a disaster!'

https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=57m9s 'because our brains want to believe, rather than think, these can turn into something like a religion. the reason we don't want to come up with blind belief: there's always more, and what it is, is something that we can't imagine. so when we give a name to something, we (...) hurt our ability to think more about it, because it already has a set of properties, it already is the thing the word denotes.' (beautifully illustrated in the video)

https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=60m 'school is the best thing ever invented to keep you from thinking about something important for more than a few minutes'

perhaps unsurprisingly, when i explained this on here two days ago, it got downvoted to -2, because hn's comment section is kind of the intellectual antithesis of alan kay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39586470

i keep being optimistic but you people make me so sad

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#24

Post by mpweiher »

nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

The Computer Revolution hasn't happened yet, OOPSLA 1997 keynote

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY

Others have already mentioned The Early History of Smalltalk, highly recommended. You'll probably want to read it a couple of times, revisit from time to time.

The big idea is messaging, or rather "ma"

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...

"The key in making great and growable systems is much more to design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal properties and behaviors should be."

"I think I recall also pointing out that it is vitally important not just to have a complete metasystem, but to have fences that help guard the crossing of metaboundaries."

" I would say that a system that allowed other metathings to be done in the ordinary course of programming (like changing what inheritance means, or what is an instance) is a bad design. (I believe that systems should allow these things, but the design should be such that there are clear fences that have to be crossed when serious extensions are made.)"

"I would suggest that more progress could be made if the smart and talented Squeak list would think more about what the next step in metaprogramming should be -- how can we get great power, parsimony, AND security of meaning?"

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#25

Post by andsoitis »

skadamat wrote: post #18
nanna wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in what sense? To me Emacs fits the bill, or at least a subset thereof.

With a live programming model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding

Pharo (a Smalltalk), is listed in that article as an example of a live programming environment.

Alan Kay is one of the designers of SmallTalk.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#26

Post by wslh »

skadamat wrote: post #13

I wish we had a popular operating system for end users like ourselves that was “live” all the way down. It’s unfortunate we’ve been stuck with Windows, Mac, and Linux only

People are different, that is why flame wars like Emacs vs. Vi still exists. It is incredible that we tend to assume that there ahould be just one technical response to problems.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#27

Post by justin66 »

theGnuMe wrote: post #22
justin66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actively answers questions on Quora and those answers come in a format (short length - though his are unusually well thought out - and narrow focus) that is easy to browse.

He's been here on HN as well in the past.

His answers on Quora represent a pretty extensive body of work. That's not true of his comments here (which are very appreciated, of course).

Quora's a better place, with a better UI, for that almost-blogging sort of thing.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#28

Post by nanna »

skadamat wrote: post #18
nanna wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in what sense? To me Emacs fits the bill, or at least a subset thereof.

With a live programming model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding

It would be cool to be able to just click on anything and adjust its code to however you like it. I guess that Smalltalk and its descendants allow this. But so does Emacs. It's not an operating system, but it covers a lot of the use-cases.

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#29

Post by skadamat »

andsoitis wrote: post #25
skadamat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a live programming model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding

Pharo (a Smalltalk), is listed in that article as an example of a live programming environment. Alan Kay is one of the designers of SmallTalk.

Yeah I like Pharo

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#30

Post by 6510 »

kragen wrote: post #23
6510 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest to me was when he was 5 he read about 150 books: "I hit first grade, and I already knew the teachers were lying to me"

he elaborates on how concepts and ideas and schooling are misleading by nature quite a bit in the talk, though if he says that sentence i haven't gotten to it yet. (i've seen him say it elsewhere) https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=8m33s 'our minds are like theaters. (...) we treat our beliefs as reality. that is the worst thing about human beings. and these theaters are tiny; we can only think of a few things at once, i…

It is hard to imagine a discovery so profound as banging 2 rocks together. Why would you do it?

Where are todays rocks?

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