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Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
71–80 of 86 posts
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#72What a bunch of of vague, hand-wavey nonsense (the article, not necessarily the HARC lab, I couldn't make heads or tails of what they actually do). Covers up its lack of clear thinking with an attempt to sound profound and obfuscatory in every sentence, like many academic articles. Also full of weird typos and misspellings (e.g. "mid 1970ties", "most currently available imaginaries about technologies"). I love Bret V…
I never saw the source code of Photoshop but propably uses OOP...
Which was invented by some Norwegians in Simula 67, wasn't it?
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#73I love academics who describe the technical work of engineers. I think this type of translation work is totally needed.
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#74Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#75Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because it means exactly the same thing as "unorthodox" and almost everyone simply says that. Hence the discussion - you aren't alone.
When given the choice of a naming a variable notSomethingDescriptive or somethingElseDescriptive, I always choose the positive name, because it's easier to understand in logical expressions, and reduces double negation. It's better to describe what something is, instead of what it's not. So unOrthoDox is more negative (and more complex) than heteroDox, because it begins with the prefix "un".
You're right, but on the other hand, it's probably not best to use words that few are familiar with if you are trying to make yourself understood. On the gripping hand, a variable name is just a variable name and its true meaning doesn't really depend on its name at all, so okay, go for the burn. (especially if you're writing Java code)
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#77This is the first I had heard of Limn, and it looks like a really interesting magazine. What other great non-mainstream tech/design magazines are out there?
I thought so as well, I hope to see more answers to this post.
I don't know if it is mainstream or not, but idn magazine is a great design mage; see here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://....
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#78What a bunch of of vague, hand-wavey nonsense (the article, not necessarily the HARC lab, I couldn't make heads or tails of what they actually do). Covers up its lack of clear thinking with an attempt to sound profound and obfuscatory in every sentence, like many academic articles. Also full of weird typos and misspellings (e.g. "mid 1970ties", "most currently available imaginaries about technologies"). I love Bret V…
Your adoption of a vague, hand-wavey, nonsensical tone as a performative critique of the article was not lost on me, well done. Comments like this show the true potential of the comment section as a media for critical discourse. It seems commentors often forget the style of their words can carry forward an argument just as well as the content. Again, well done. I've taken this as inspiration and a challenge to be more thoughtful and creative with the style of my arguments.
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nearly-exact is definitely not exact. To my ear 'heterodox' connotes difference and pluralism while 'unorthodox' is more of a negation. (Of course other mileages may vary.) But different words always exist for a reason—if they didn't, one would have fallen out of use. Pretentiousness is not enough to keep a word alive!
I wonder if you can offer a pair of online dictionary definitions that illustrates what you see as the difference in meaning between the two words. (I bet you can't)
There is definitely a difference in meaning, maybe just in specialized fields like theology and economics.
An Austrian school economist, or an Arianist in the early Christian church, would be called "heterodox" but probably not "unorthodox". It has the connotation of following a definite tradition that is not the main tradition in the field. "Unorthodox" means something more like "doing your own thing", so Steven Levitt (the Freakonomics guy) might be called an "unorthodox economist" because he studies unusual topics like drug dealers, but not a "heterodox economist" because he studies these strange topics using mainstream theories.
I think "heterodox" fits reasonably well in this article, it suggests that these engineers are following a distinct tradition, not just "doing their own thing".
Re: Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
#80Victor has indicated that his Realtalk group[0] at HARC is trying to release new research by the end of the year - so maybe we won't have to wait too long before learning a little more than this article provides. [0] https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/
I recently asked Brett: "It's such a delight to introduce somebody to your work for the first time! I’m mentoring somebody at work in the ways of user interface design, and I just linked him to your classic “Magic Ink” article, and I am indulging myself by reading it again. You’ve written so much since then, that I have a lot of catching up to do. Any suggestions where I should start?" He referred me to these two art…
Video is gone :(