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The Future of Programming (2013)

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Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#41

Post by davesque »

symstym wrote: post #24

I think this attitude of "we solved these problems decades ago!" is rather naive and sometimes arrogant. I think it's a fantastic talk, and that Bret Victor and Alan Kay are geniuses. But I feel that they both promote the idea that we definitively solved all these important computing problems years ago, and that people are just too clueless/resistant to catch on. Yes, I agree that many good ideas have been culturally…

If you're saying you think the talk was arrogant, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I just found it funny. I thought the whole format of posing as a computer engineer in the early seventies seemed clever. Parts of the talk were a bit snarky, but not Linus-Torvalds-snarky.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#42

Post by tluyben2 »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #8

Is anyone working on these problems, or did people just give up? It's crazy to think that the way we create and consume software barely changed since the 60s/70s.

Check here;

https://2017.splashcon.org/track/live-2017#Call-for-Papers

Jonathan Edwards submitted something I like and HARC (checking out Sean his submission now), MS Research are doing cool things.

I wanted to go there. Next time perhaps; interesting work anyway.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#43

Post by quantumhobbit »

continuational wrote: post #27
pishpash wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercialization and commoditization: "Why make things better when people don't care?"

Oh, people do care. Programmers are expensive, and making them more productive means more money for the bottom line. It’s just that we don’t know how. Even designing a good text based language is very challenging, and in no way a solved problem. Something graphical and interactive has a much larger design surface, and is thus even harder to get right, especially for general purpose programming.

I don’t know that the people making the decisions care all that much. Even though programmers are expensive, most managers seem to prefer to hire a dozen programmers where far fewer would get the job done if given access to better tools. They look better leading a bigger team regardless of the teams output.

The incentive exists for the shareholders, but they are not the ones making hiring decisions and choosing tools for programmers to use.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#44

Post by david927 »

fasquoika wrote: post #40

Why does everyone seem to believe this talk is about the fact that these problems were "solved" decades ago? My takeaway is that, no, these things weren't solved, they were abandoned. We got tunnel vision and decided that a handful of ideas were what programming is , rather than just a tiny subset. This talk isn't about how the early programmers were better at everything, if anything it's the opposite, that we should…

This talk is not saying that these problems were "solved" decades ago but rather, decades ago we had much better instincts and in many ways we were on the right track, and now we're not.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#45

Post by symstym »

shalabhc wrote: post #32
symstym wrote: post #24

I think this attitude of "we solved these problems decades ago!" is rather naive and sometimes arrogant. I think it's a fantastic talk, and that Bret Victor and Alan Kay are geniuses. But I feel that they both promote the idea that we definitively solved all these important computing problems years ago, and that people are just too clueless/resistant to catch on. Yes, I agree that many good ideas have been culturally…

> But for the most part, the reason these great past ideas are not in use is because nobody has made them into a compelling product. I think you're overestimating the market's ability to select good ideas and specifically, promote long term scientific advances. A lot of variables affect what succeeds, e.g. marketing, coincidence, network effects etc. You cannot leave everything to the market (i.e. what people adopt)…

I certainly don't think that the market selects good ideas or is sufficient to promote long-term advances. Per the bit of my comment that you quoted, I'm saying that the reason that the ideas are not in use (more) is that they haven't been incorporated into more compelling products. He feels that good ideas are not in wide use because we didn't "get" them or forgot them. I'm saying that sure, that may be part of the reason, but I think most of the reason is that certain ideas that seem good on paper are really hard to put into practice.

Quoting the talk:

> But I do think that it would be kind of a shame if in forty years we’re still coding in procedures and text files in a sequential programing model. I think that would suggest we didn’t learn anything from this really fertile period in computer science. So that would kind of be a tragedy.

Lots of people seem aware of the idea of coding without text files. There are some "visual" programming environments with traction (in the game dev world, Max/MSP). I'm even working on one myself! But there are significant downsides/challenges associated with this approach (more difficult to version control, often tied to one editor, etc.). So to his quote, the fact that we're still coding in text files may not be because we didn't learn anything, but because the idea of non-textual programming is hard to form into a product that more people want to use.

I agree with you that his talk is very valuable in terms of drawing attention to ideas that deserve more exploration, and I love the talk. It's just this one facet that I take issue with, the suggestion that the ideas haven't caught on because nobody appreciates them. His talks are frequently at the top of HN, they are widely appreciated. People have been super excited about related projects, like Light Table and Eve, and yet they haven't gotten much traction. So I think it's worth acknowledging that the problem is less idea-awareness and more compelling-implementation-difficulty.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#46

Post by pierre_d528 »

macintux wrote: post #2

One of my all-time favorite talks. The IT industry is pretty bad in general at knowing what problems have previously been solved.

Treasures from Alan Kay and friends can be found here: http://www.vpri.org

Do check the STEPS project: a complete system in 10_000 readable LOC.

Really exceptional.

Bret Victor can be found here: http://worrydream.com

Friends can be found here: https://harc.ycr.org/member/

Make sure to check Alan Kay's answers on Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Kay-11

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#47

Post by krmboya »

I've been looking into the linked resources more and more of late and they reveal a perspective of computing research I find I'm really excited about.

I wonder how one can start studying and taking part in this direction of computing research.

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#49

Post by fasquoika »

david927 wrote: post #44
fasquoika wrote: post #40

Why does everyone seem to believe this talk is about the fact that these problems were "solved" decades ago? My takeaway is that, no, these things weren't solved, they were abandoned. We got tunnel vision and decided that a handful of ideas were what programming is , rather than just a tiny subset. This talk isn't about how the early programmers were better at everything, if anything it's the opposite, that we should…

This talk is not saying that these problems were "solved" decades ago but rather, decades ago we had much better instincts and in many ways we were on the right track, and now we're not.

Except that the track we're on now was started then. Unix was created during the time period he's talking about. We've just stopped looking at the other stuff. They weren't "on the right track", they didn't have a track. That's the point: they were doing everything

Re: The Future of Programming (2013)

#50

Post by tj-teej »

zvrba wrote: post #22
fhood wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of my professors favorite gripes. He loved to tell stories about how companies would reinvent algorithms (usually multiple times) that had been published in the 70's and 80's

The problem here is search. The problem may have been solved, but finding the relevant paper is like looking for a needle in the haystack. It doesn't help that terminology has changed during the years...

The problem with the solution to the problem of search is searching for the solution to the problem of search?
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