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Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

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Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#81

Post by wolfv »

cing wrote: post #5

In other words... a meatspace debugger? Cool idea, but I don't quite buy the comparison to "spaces laden with sensors and visualizations" like the NASA control center, Large Hadron Collider, etc.. All of those spaces revolve around monitoring, not the design/making process. In a similar vein, in my field of computational science, heaps of money has been invested in spaces for data exploration/visualization [1], unfor…

I agree. The big-screen control-center examples he gave are for monitoring a mission in real time. The Hadron Collider scientists analyze the data later on ordinary-size monitors. Its the systematic data collection that is important.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#82

Post by 59nadir »

darkmighty wrote: post #33
tsunamifury wrote: post #11

I think software engineer and the fundamentals of coding have always had a bias towards those who can conceptualize ideas in the abstract, then build with the assumptions that those concepts are happening regardless of their ability to see them. This is fine, except that it limits those who need to tinker in order to find out how those concepts work. When the elements are visually recognizable and physically manipula…

I can't tell if everyone one is like that (I assume not), but I am extremely reliant on visualization, and I suppose Bret is also. I believe profoundly on it's power partly because it's the only way I can really get things done properly, which is why those tools resonate so much to me. I have a friend however that shudders every time I mention making programming more visual. I mean, If I'm not visualizing something,…

> I have a friend however that shudders every time I mention making programming more visual.

Whenever someone mentions making _programming_ more visual I just get this feeling I don't really understand what they mean. The act of programming is just text to me. Doing simulations, measurements and what not can be visual, but the only way I can see "visual programming" is clunky and cumbersome.

I don't know if I'm just misunderstanding people, but the composition of code doesn't need to be anything else than text-based in my opinion.

Edit: I have seen some of Bret Victor's tools and his tool for visualizing change in game programming is very cool and I'm sure very helpful, but that is a very, very specific thing and whenever you take it out of that context it becomes so much less interesting and helpful.

I'm not advocating just giving up on the whole idea, but I feel like people are trying to generalize things that they've only imagined for very specific purposes.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#83

Post by Glench »

faceyspacey wrote: post #80
Glench wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried asking yourself why Bret would not want to open source his demos? Can you think of any other reasons that don't pre-suppose he is "arrogant"?

Yea no good ones. He's OCD and not happy with his code. He has a lame philosophy that we must make it on our own and shouldn't have help, ie that providing the code will detract from it. ..he's the one saying he would. I get the sense he's just disorganized and all over the place, hyper focused with his latest discovery du jour. ie there is no grand plan. I used to hope he was buildin a commercial company but I just…

It seems your response says a lot more about your thinking than it does about Bret's. Perhaps you might try taking the view that Bret has really good reasons for doing what he's doing and try to figure out what they are, rather than presuming what he's doing is not for good reasons.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#84

Post by kentpalmer »

A theory that I have been developing that might be a basis for understanding the possibility of Seeing Spaces is called Schemas Theory.

See http://SchemaTheory.net for a draft presentation that is still in work. Audios are still in production for the tutorial.

Other papers on Schemas Theory are at https://independent.academia.edu/KentPalmer and http://emergentdesign.net and http://archonic.net

A good book on Schemas is Umberto Eco Kant and the Platypus.

Basically schemas theory tells us what it is possible to see and also give us the intelligible templates for our designs.

http://kdp.me

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#85

Post by tripzilch »

GuiA wrote: post #21
loup-vaillant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's… horrible. It feels like he's under a gag order. I wager this stuff could be useful to all of us, but Apple just clings on this "Intellectual Property" like, like… Well, like any corporation.

Huh...? He worked for a company out of his own will, and that company paid him in exchange for his work, with the full understanding that all ownership of the work would go to them. I mean, it's not even as if Apple hides that about them- that's one thing they tell you OVER and OVER when you interview with them. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he accepted to work for them (and did so for many years), an…

> He knew exactly what he was getting into

> he definitely doesn't seem to mind what he got out of it

you might have glossed over the second entry in the FAQ, where he calls it a "mistake".

sounds to me he made an error in judgement that he would have liked to make differently, in hindsight.

IMO, in such circumstances it seems a bit cold to side with the corporation for the sole reason that they happen to be legally in the right. but maybe that's just me, being all compassionate and silly.

Re: Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces [video]

#86

Post by tripzilch »

greggman wrote: post #36

I love Bret Victor's talks, blog posts, etc. They're super inspiring. 2 things came to mind though. 1. It seems, possibly, the exact wrong time to make rooms with giant displays. With things like Google Glass and Oculus Rift as first gen (2nd?) VR/AR you could project all of that info virtually and cheaply and be able to have all the visualization he describes wherever you are, not just at a makerspace that only a fe…

The bigger problem I wondered about, is that he glossed over how to "reset" the robot, to start out in a set initial condition for each run.

He had some fade-to-black effect in his presentation, after which the robot magically appears at its starting point ... yeah. You're basically going to need a robot arm if you want to automate that bit.

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