What are your pet peeves within your field of work?
None of my peeves are "pets"
Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
771–780 of 931 posts
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the insight. In your point of view, on top of the current hardware infrastructure, how do we build a decentralized network operating system (contrary to the old centralized timesharing system)?
Take a look at the Internet itself -- and then take a look at Dave Reed's 1978 PhD thesis at MIT (can be found via the CSAIL website) -- we used many of these ideas in the Croquet project
Alan, is this the right direction we are looking at?
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#773Earlier quoted context omitted.
For what?
1) To become as mainstream in a general-purpose way as OOP and functional programming paradigms are. One of the problems I know is lack of composability. 2) To become your favourite approach.
Historically, (1) has not particularly depended on merit, and (2) would require a lot (because "nice atoms" were more interesting back in the 60s than today).
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#774Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take a look at the Internet itself -- and then take a look at Dave Reed's 1978 PhD thesis at MIT (can be found via the CSAIL website) -- we used many of these ideas in the Croquet project
Alan, is this the right direction we are looking at? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt
I think you can find much of what is worth knowing about these projects starting there.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#775Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alan, is this the right direction we are looking at? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt
I think you can find much of what is worth knowing about these projects starting there.
Now we feel like Steve Jobs visiting PARC. :-)
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#776Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the answer contained in the quote? Do a cost/benefit analysis of the "amount of time and energy" that would go "down these ratholes" versus the "the time not wasted in trying to fix other people’s not quite right tools."
But how can you assess this until you have gone down those rat holes?
The Lean Startup advocates proportional investment in solutions. WHEN the problem comes up (again, after deciding to do this) determine how much your time percentage wise this took out of your week or month. Invest that amount to fix it, right now. My interpretation would be, spend that time trying to solve part of it. Every time that problem comes up keep investing in that thing, that way if you've made the wrong call you only waste a small portion of your time. But you also are taking steps to mitigate it if becomes more of an issue in the future.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#777Hi Alan, One of the concepts I've heard you talk about before in interviews and the like is simulation. I think simulation is huge and we should be seeing products that cater towards it, but largely aren't. http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=5 http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/08/links-1214-come-ye-to-b... Do you still think simulation is an important promise of the computer revolution, and are there any…
Yes, and I don't really. An interesting one that has been around for a few years -- that can be used by the general public, children, etc. -- is NetLogo (a takeoff from StarLogo). There is also a StarLogo Nova that is worth looking at. But these are not really general simulation languages of the kind we need in 2016 and beyond ...
I need to read what you've said regarding simulations and pseudotime, but I've been wondering if this is along the same lines has as an HDL like VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog.
I do chip implementations in those languages, which of course involves simulation and a time concept. I get the idea that is not the sort of simulation you mean, but I'm not sure. The other thought I had was simulation more in the SPICE sense that iterate toward a solution in steps.
Any chance you could briefly clarify, and/or toss out a resource that points in the right direction?
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#778Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think object is a very powerful idea to wrap "local" context. But in a network (communication) environment, it is still challenging to handle "remote" context with object. That is why we have APIs and serialization/deserialization overhead. In the ideal homogeneous world of smalltalk, it is a less issue. But if you want a Windows machine to talk to a Unix, the remote context becomes an issue. In principle we can se…
This is why "the objects of the future" have to be ambassadors that can negotiate with other objects they've never seen. Think about this as one of the consequences of massive scaling ...
It's hard for me to grasp what this negotiation would look like. Particularly with objects that haven't encountered each other. It just seems like such a huge problem.
I don't really know anything at all about microbiology, but maybe climbing the ladder of abstraction to small insects like ants. There is clearly negotiation and communication happening there, but I have to think it's pretty well bounded. Even if one ant encountered another ant, and needed to communicate where food was, it's with a fixed set of semantics that are already understood by both parties.
Or with honeybees, doing the communication dance. I have no idea if the communication goes beyond "food here" or if it's "we need to decide who to send out."
It seems like you have to have learning in the object to really negotiate with something it hasn't encountered before. Maybe I'm making things too hard.
Maybe "can we communicate" is the first negotiation, and if not, give up.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#779I can think of no better person to ask than Alan Kay: What are the best books relevant to programming that have nothing to do with programming? (e.g. How Buildings Learn, Living Systems, etc.)?
Lots ... Molecular Biology of the Cell Notes on a Synthesis of Form etc
I for one would love to see the 'etc' expanded, but in any case I do appreciate you taking the time to respond. Thanks!
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#780Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and I don't really. An interesting one that has been around for a few years -- that can be used by the general public, children, etc. -- is NetLogo (a takeoff from StarLogo). There is also a StarLogo Nova that is worth looking at. But these are not really general simulation languages of the kind we need in 2016 and beyond ...
I need to read what you've said regarding simulations and pseudotime, but I've been wondering if this is along the same lines has as an HDL like VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog. I do chip implementations in those languages, which of course involves simulation and a time concept. I get the idea that is not the sort of simulation you mean, but I'm not sure. The other thought I had was simulation more in the SPICE sense that…
What would a simulation of an epidemic look like? Or a simulation of ants finding food via pheromone trails. Or simulation of dye diffusing in water? Or a simulation of an object being dropped?
Etc