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This seems like an excellent toy, a great tool for education, and possibly a good UI for future end-user systems that mostly live in the cloud. But in no way so

This seems like an excellent toy, a great tool for education, and possibly a good UI for future end-user systems that mostly live in the cloud. But in no way something that could be used to build those systems. Almost everything that's good and powerful about software comes precisely because it's non-physical. It's probably just a failure of imagination on my part, but I can't see a path where re-introducing a bunch of physical representations of virtual things makes things better for those trying to create, maintain, or understand complex systems.

gasbag 9y ago
Their FAQ seems to disagree with you: Is Dynamicland open source? Dynamicland shares many core values with the open source movement and in some ways goes beyond them. A primary design principle at Dynamicland is that all running code must be visible, physically printed on paper. Thus whenever a program is running, its source code is right there for anybody to see and modify. Likewise the operating system itself is implemented as pages of code, and members of the community constantly modify and improve it. That said, the pages of code physically in Dynamicland are not in a git repository. The community organizes code spatially — laying it out on tables and walls, storing it in folders, binders, and bookshelves. https://dynamicland.org/faq/ https://dynamicland.org/faq/
- westoncb 9y ago
  The parent made a good point, and your comment is completely unrelated although it purports to be an argument against it.
azeirah 9y ago
I can see this being very useful for Software Engineers, although I agree with you not directly for building systems. Scrum boards, build statuses and project statistics are good candidates for this system. I can also see it being useful as a very general _and_ powerful prototyping tool, one of the demos shows someone making an input controller from a physical spring and a colored piece of clay. When it becomes so easy to integrate your environment with the computer, I can only begin to imagine what's possible.
bvfanboy3 9y ago
Since the programs are printed out and stored in filing cabinets, it'd be too bad if something cool happening at one Dynamicland instance couldn't be easily shared with another instance somewhere else. We know that computing would be better if it was shared in a physical space with real-world social circles. But not everybody has those: some people are disabled, or rural, or outcasts. The same issue comes up with experiments with local meshes and P2P gossip for new social networks. Not as many people meet strangers in chat rooms or games these days, but it'd be sad if the baby of connecting people anywhere was thrown out with the bathwater of big social panopticons and glass screen prisons.
- Stefstefstef 9y ago
  why don't you just share it and print it as need at other locations? the data is all readable
spraak 9y ago
Reminds me of the introduction to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which says nearly the same, that problems in computer science are unbounded by physical limitations (barring the hardware it's run on).
codinghorror 9y ago
I tend to agree. Physical fetishism seems like a retreat from the core values of computing.
- icc97 9y ago
  I think 'core values' is a question for whoever is using the personal computer. Given that this comes from research directly connected to Alan Kay, he at least is well aware of the values of the people who pushed computers from simple calculating machines to things that we create with. They also repeatedly refer to the research of Douglas Engelbart and his desire for computers to augment humans. So they are at least trying to bring forward ideas from a time when the core values of the personal computer were being considered.
iNerdier 9y ago
Arguably then it’s not for you. I’m someone who comes from a background of the visual arts and always found the monolithic seeming walls of text that most programs come in very daunting until I found things like Processing where you can do things and have a quick, iterative visual approach to what you want to make. I’m sure there were people who were against the concept of syntax highlighting when it began for similar reasons but I would hazard a guess that most people who code regularly find it invaluable. I grant you that this probably won’t be useful for say, kernel programming, but it is also extremely new and an experiment. The worst thing we can do is ossify our ways of thinking and not be open to new and experimental ideas.
icc97 9y ago
Brett Victor has done numerous experiments to try to improve the way we can visualise data or be more creative with it, combining the freedom of drawing on paper with the reproducibility of software. I think what they are doing at DynamicLand is trying to similar experiments as Douglas Engelbart back in the 60s to try and find ways to bring more of the other innate skills we have into a computer that is not via a keyboard. So like the mouse, it might seem like a toy but it has the potential to be combined with pure programming. Also especially with neural networks that are learning how to code, we may be able to give more physical input to a neural network and it will produce the program. All this is looking far into the future, so they don't know what the final outcome is either, but they're experimenting to find what works.

gasbag 9y ago

Their FAQ seems to disagree with you: Is Dynamicland open source? Dynamicland shares many core values with the open source movement and in some ways goes beyond them. A primary design principle at Dynamicland is that all running code must be visible, physically printed on paper. Thus whenever a program is running, its source code is right there for anybody to see and modify. Likewise the operating system itself is implemented as pages of code, and members of the community constantly modify and improve it. That said, the pages of code physically in Dynamicland are not in a git repository. The community organizes code spatially — laying it out on tables and walls, storing it in folders, binders, and bookshelves. https://dynamicland.org/faq/ https://dynamicland.org/faq/

westoncb 9y ago
The parent made a good point, and your comment is completely unrelated although it purports to be an argument against it.

azeirah 9y ago

I can see this being very useful for Software Engineers, although I agree with you not directly for building systems. Scrum boards, build statuses and project statistics are good candidates for this system. I can also see it being useful as a very general _and_ powerful prototyping tool, one of the demos shows someone making an input controller from a physical spring and a colored piece of clay. When it becomes so easy to integrate your environment with the computer, I can only begin to imagine what's possible.

bvfanboy3 9y ago

Since the programs are printed out and stored in filing cabinets, it'd be too bad if something cool happening at one Dynamicland instance couldn't be easily shared with another instance somewhere else. We know that computing would be better if it was shared in a physical space with real-world social circles. But not everybody has those: some people are disabled, or rural, or outcasts. The same issue comes up with experiments with local meshes and P2P gossip for new social networks. Not as many people meet strangers in chat rooms or games these days, but it'd be sad if the baby of connecting people anywhere was thrown out with the bathwater of big social panopticons and glass screen prisons.

Stefstefstef 9y ago
why don't you just share it and print it as need at other locations? the data is all readable

spraak 9y ago

Reminds me of the introduction to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which says nearly the same, that problems in computer science are unbounded by physical limitations (barring the hardware it's run on).

codinghorror 9y ago

I tend to agree. Physical fetishism seems like a retreat from the core values of computing.

icc97 9y ago
I think 'core values' is a question for whoever is using the personal computer. Given that this comes from research directly connected to Alan Kay, he at least is well aware of the values of the people who pushed computers from simple calculating machines to things that we create with. They also repeatedly refer to the research of Douglas Engelbart and his desire for computers to augment humans. So they are at least trying to bring forward ideas from a time when the core values of the personal computer were being considered.

iNerdier 9y ago

Arguably then it’s not for you. I’m someone who comes from a background of the visual arts and always found the monolithic seeming walls of text that most programs come in very daunting until I found things like Processing where you can do things and have a quick, iterative visual approach to what you want to make. I’m sure there were people who were against the concept of syntax highlighting when it began for similar reasons but I would hazard a guess that most people who code regularly find it invaluable. I grant you that this probably won’t be useful for say, kernel programming, but it is also extremely new and an experiment. The worst thing we can do is ossify our ways of thinking and not be open to new and experimental ideas.

icc97 9y ago

Brett Victor has done numerous experiments to try to improve the way we can visualise data or be more creative with it, combining the freedom of drawing on paper with the reproducibility of software. I think what they are doing at DynamicLand is trying to similar experiments as Douglas Engelbart back in the 60s to try and find ways to bring more of the other innate skills we have into a computer that is not via a keyboard. So like the mouse, it might seem like a toy but it has the potential to be combined with pure programming. Also especially with neural networks that are learning how to code, we may be able to give more physical input to a neural network and it will produce the program. All this is looking far into the future, so they don't know what the final outcome is either, but they're experimenting to find what works.