7 ms·

I wouldn't put Ted Nelson on the same page like the other ones. The other three actually build stuff that is now everywhere. Ted never got anywhere is now bitch

by kabes 9y ago

I wouldn't put Ted Nelson on the same page like the other ones. The other three actually build stuff that is now everywhere. Ted never got anywhere is now bitching all the time on how much better his ideas were than what we actually got.

funkymike 9y ago
Perhaps then the best lesson he has to teach is that execution (with a bit of luck) is more important than the idea.
DonHopkins 9y ago
I think his biggest problem is that he refuses to collaborate with other people, or build on top of current technology. He's had a lot of great important inspirational ideas, but his implementation of those ideas didn't go anywhere, he's angry and bitter, and he hasn't bothered re-implementing them with any of the "inferior technologies" that he rejects. Back in 1999, project Xanadu released their source code as open source. It was a classic example of "open sourcing" something that was never going to ship otherwise, and that nobody could actually use or improve, just to get some attention ("open source" was a huge fad at the time). http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/08/27/web_precursor_xanadu_project_goes/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/08/27/web_precursor_xanadu... >Register believe it or not factoid: Nelson's book Computer Lib was at one point published by Microsoft Press. Oh yes. ® They originally wrote Xanadu in Smalltalk, then implemented a Smalltalk to C++ compiler, and finally they released the machine generated output of that compiler, which was unreadable and practically useless. It completely missed the point and purpose of "open source software". I looked at the code when it was released in 1999 and wrote up some initial reactions that Dave Winer asked me to post to his UserLand Frontier discussion group: http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010163.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010163.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010164.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010164.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010165.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010165.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010166.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010166.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010167.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010167.... A few excerpts (remember I wrote this in 1999 so some of the examples are dated): >Sheez. You don't actually believe anybody will be able to do anything useful with all that source code, do you? Take a look at the code. It's mostly uncommented glue gluing glue to glue. Nothing reusable there. >Have you gotten it running? The documentation included was not very helpful. Is there a web page that tells me how to run Xanadu? Did you have to install Python, and run it in a tty window? >What would be much more useful, would be some well written design documents and port-mortems, comparisons with current technologies like DHTML, XML, XLink, XPath, HyTime, XSL, etc, and proposals for extending current technologies and using them to capture the good ideas of Xanadu. >Has Xanadu been used to document its own source code? How does it compare to, say, the browseable cross-referenced mozilla source code? Or Knuth's classic Literate Programming work with TeX? >Last time I saw Ted Nelson talk (a few years ago at Ted Selker's NPUC workshop at IBM Almaden), he was quite bitter, but he didn't have anything positive to contribute. He talked about how he invented everything before anyone else, but everyone thought he was crazy, and how the world wide web totally sucks, but it's not his fault, if only they would have listened to him. And he verbally attacked a nice guy from Netscape (Martin Haeberli -- Paul's brother) for lame reasons, when there were plenty of other perfectly valid things to rag the poor guy about. >Don't get me wrong -- I've got my own old worn-out copy of the double sided Dream Machines / Computer Lib, as well as Literary Machines, which I enjoyed and found very inspiring. I first met the Xanadu guys some time ago in the 80's, when they were showing off Xanadu at the MIT AI lab. >I was a "random turist" high school kid visiting the AI lab on a pilgrimage. That was when I first met Hugh Daniel: this energetic excited big hairy hippie guy in a Xanadu baseball cap with wings, who I worked with later, hacking NeWS. Hugh and I worked together for two different companies porting NeWS to the Mac. >I "got" the hypertext demo they were showing (presumably the same code they've finally released -- that they were running on an Ann Arbor Ambassador, of course). I thought Xanadu was neat and important, but an obvious idea that had been around in many forms, that a lot of people were working on. It reminded me of the "info" documentation browser in emacs (but it wasn't programmable). >The fact that Xanadu didn't have a built-in extension language was a disappointment, since extensibility was an essential ingredient to the success of Emacs, HyperCard, Director, and the World Wide Web. >I would be much more interested in reading about why Xanadu failed, and how it was found to be inadequate, than how great it would have been if only it had taken over the world. >Anyway, my take on all this hyper-crap is that it's useless without a good scripting language. I think that's why Emacs was so successful, why HyperCard was so important, what made NeWS so interesting, why HyperLook was so powerful, why Director has been so successful, how it's possible for you to read this discussion board served by Frontier, and what made the World Wide Web what it is today: they all had extension languages built into them. >So what's Xanadu's scripting language story? Later on, in the second version, they obviously recognized the need for an interactive programming language like Smalltalk, for development. >But a real-world system like the World Wide Web is CONSTANTLY in development (witness all the stupid "under construction" icons), so the Xanadu back and front end developers aren't the only people who need the flexibility that only an extension language can provide. As JavaScript and the World Wide Web have proven, authors (the many people writing web pages) need extension languages at least as much as developers (the few people writing browsers and servers). >Ideally, an extension language should be designed into the system from day one. JavaScript kind of fits the bill, but was really just nailed onto the side of HTML as an afterthought, and is pretty kludgey compared to how it could have been. >That's Xanadu's problem too -- it tries to explain the entire universe from creation to collapse in terms of one grand unified theory, when all we need now are some practical techniques for rubbing sticks together to make fire, building shelters over our heads to keep the rain out, and convincing people to be nice and stop killing each other. The grandiose theories of Xanadu were certainly ahead of their time. >It's the same old story of gross practicality winning out over pure idealism. >Anyway, my point, as it relates to Xanadu, and is illustrated by COM (which has its own, more down-to-earth set of ideals), is that it's the interfaces, and the ideas and protocols behind them, that are important. Not the implementation. Code is (and should be) throw-away. >There's nothing wrong with publishing old code for educational purposes, to learn from its successes and mistakes, but don't waste your time trying to make it into something it's not.
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  > Anyway, my take on all this hyper-crap is that it's useless without a good scripting language. I think that's why Emacs was so successful, why HyperCard was so important, what made NeWS so interesting, why HyperLook was so powerful, why Director has been so successful, how it's possible for you to read this discussion board served by Frontier, and what made the World Wide Web what it is today: they all had extension languages built into them. I'm wondering what your wiser, older self has to say about this 20 years on. Isn't it useful that documents you wrote 20 years ago can still be read? From my memories, the Web craze started well before JavaScript, and JavaScript really only jumped on the bandwagon; so how could it be the critical success factor for the Web? The success of the Web and JavaScript in the last two decades speaks for itself; but in 2018, JavaScript and the procedural Web could very well be its undoing when considering the original goals of the Web, couldn't it?
  - dvanduzer 9y ago
    I don't think Don meant that JS was the critical success factor for the Web. But that extensible scripting is crucial to the kind of Web Ted Nelson wanted in the first place. From my lived experience, the Web craze would be better termed the Modem craze. And the critical success factor that turned it into the Web, was NSF removing the restrictions on commerce in 1995. JavaScript is just what got HTML closer to some ideals of Xanadu. Not close enough for Ted's vision, but that is a broad sociopolitical vision.
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      Server side scripting languages were critical to the success of the web, before browser side JavaScript was available and matured. Simple stateless perl cgi scripts forked from apache that talk to text databases or mysql were the first simplest step, but things got much more interesting with long running stateful application servers like Zope (Python), Java, Radio UserLand, HyperCard, node, etc. My favorite thing about node is that it lets you use the same language and libraries and data on both the client and server side. That's an enormous advantage that far outweighs JavaScript's disadvantages. But some people just can't see or believe that, for whatever reason, and they're fine with flipping and flopping back and forth between different languages, and hiring different people to write multiple subtly divergent versions of everything in different languages. Face it: for all its faults, JavaScript won. I will always have a place in my heart for FORTH, PostScript, MockLisp, ScriptX, TCL, Python, HyperTalk, UserTalk, CFML, Java, and all those other weird obsolete scripting languages, but it's soooo much easier to program in one language without switching context all the time, even if it's not the best language in the universe. And TypeScript is a pretty darn good way of writing JavaScript. You're right, the web was held back until it was finally considered "ok" to use it for commercial activity! I'd say JavaScript is just what got HTML closer to implementing any ideal you want, and there's no reason Xanadu couldn't be implemented on top of current web technologies (except that Ted doesn't want to). But I don't think extensibility and scripting itself was part of Ted's original vision or implementation. Just as so much has happened since MVC was invented (yet it's still religiously applied by cargo-cult programmers), also so much has happened since Xanadu was invented (like distributed source code control, for example), which requires a total rethinking from basic principles. We also have the benefit of a lot of really terrible examples and disasterous experiments to learn from (wikipedia markup language, wordpress, etc). Many of Ted's principles should be among those basic principles considered, but they're not the only ones.
textfiles 9y ago
Hmm. I could show where your dashed-off summary is wrong by knocking down the other three, or educating you on Ted's context. I'll go with education, as Ted would prefer. You are confusing "I heard their names" with "They made the thing I use". Berners-Lee didn't write the browser you use. Kay isn't hard at work on the new iPhone. and Engelbart doesn't pop into the Logitech offices to see how the new controls are going. Nelson wrote multiple critical works of theory and practice, edited very influential magazines, coded prototypes and processes that were then re-used or modified as time went on, and has continually spoken on his principles and ideas behind the interface of humans and machines. He has stressed, for over half a century, the importance of the treatment and access of information, which turns out to be the top priority of the human race in the contemporary sphere. Ted's name has been brought up in meetings you're not invited to and events you can't attend, as well as ones you could be. His influence is gigantic, and the fact he freely shares his ideas past the age of 80 is a gift some of us appreciate very much. He doesn't strut across a stage next to a product he yelled at others to make. That doesn't make him less of a giant.
- randallsquared 9y ago
  > He doesn't strut across a stage next to a product he yelled at others to make. Is that what you believe Berners-Lee, Engelbart, and Kay were doing?
  - wcarron 9y ago
    I think he kind of fell off-topic there, too. I interpreted it as a very non-sequitur dig at Steve Jobs. Either way, not relevant to the conversation.
    - textfiles 9y ago
      I was merely attesting to the two main criteria that many modern students of technology equate with "greatness"; either a straight-up declaration of a Name, or by seeing the Great One on some sort of blackish back-lit stage with a product announcement. Keep up.
noblethrasher 9y ago
On the other hand, Ted has commanded the admiration of some people that you probably consider to be great minds, such as Drs. Engelbart and Kay.
tudorw 9y ago
wrong. go read some more.
- tudorw 9y ago
  wrong, as in, false statement, there is evidence Ted has shipped software, your statement is wrong. "The other three actually build stuff that is now everywhere. Ted never got anywhere." This is patently ridiculous, it's like accusing Socrates of not creating the perfect society, I'm proud to wear a -1 on this, it means I'm annoying at least one other ill informed person.
  - _mhr_ 9y ago
    I suggest linking to sources to read next time.
    - tudorw 9y ago
      what, like google, it's Ted Nelson and we are on hacker news, and the OP passed a comment that showed they obviously already know how to use the internet, what would be the point of me linking to sources, Ted Nelson, Computer Lib and Dream Machines, if you've not read it, what have you read?
nzeribe 9y ago
Ted Nelson's ideas continue to point a road to the future, to a better internet. Sir Tim's Web has been creaking along, almost since it's inception due to it's fragile design. That you don't rank him alongside the other three only says that you don't understand - which is fine.
- kabes 9y ago
  I didn't say his ideas aren't good. I'm saying I value execution more than ideas. Everybody has good ideas, few do a good execution. It's like somebody had the idea to create a teleportation device, in 50 years time got absolutely nowhere with it and is now grumpy that the planes everybody uses are too slow. "If only they'd followed my idea of a teleportation device, everything would've been much better."

by kabes 9y ago

funkymike 9y ago

Perhaps then the best lesson he has to teach is that execution (with a bit of luck) is more important than the idea.

DonHopkins 9y ago

I think his biggest problem is that he refuses to collaborate with other people, or build on top of current technology. He's had a lot of great important inspirational ideas, but his implementation of those ideas didn't go anywhere, he's angry and bitter, and he hasn't bothered re-implementing them with any of the "inferior technologies" that he rejects. Back in 1999, project Xanadu released their source code as open source. It was a classic example of "open sourcing" something that was never going to ship otherwise, and that nobody could actually use or improve, just to get some attention ("open source" was a huge fad at the time). http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/08/27/web_precursor_xanadu_project_goes/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/08/27/web_precursor_xanadu... >Register believe it or not factoid: Nelson's book Computer Lib was at one point published by Microsoft Press. Oh yes. ® They originally wrote Xanadu in Smalltalk, then implemented a Smalltalk to C++ compiler, and finally they released the machine generated output of that compiler, which was unreadable and practically useless. It completely missed the point and purpose of "open source software". I looked at the code when it was released in 1999 and wrote up some initial reactions that Dave Winer asked me to post to his UserLand Frontier discussion group: http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010163.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010163.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010164.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010164.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010165.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010165.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010166.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010166.... http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010167.html http://static.userland.com/userlanddiscussarchive/msg010167.... A few excerpts (remember I wrote this in 1999 so some of the examples are dated): >Sheez. You don't actually believe anybody will be able to do anything useful with all that source code, do you? Take a look at the code. It's mostly uncommented glue gluing glue to glue. Nothing reusable there. >Have you gotten it running? The documentation included was not very helpful. Is there a web page that tells me how to run Xanadu? Did you have to install Python, and run it in a tty window? >What would be much more useful, would be some well written design documents and port-mortems, comparisons with current technologies like DHTML, XML, XLink, XPath, HyTime, XSL, etc, and proposals for extending current technologies and using them to capture the good ideas of Xanadu. >Has Xanadu been used to document its own source code? How does it compare to, say, the browseable cross-referenced mozilla source code? Or Knuth's classic Literate Programming work with TeX? >Last time I saw Ted Nelson talk (a few years ago at Ted Selker's NPUC workshop at IBM Almaden), he was quite bitter, but he didn't have anything positive to contribute. He talked about how he invented everything before anyone else, but everyone thought he was crazy, and how the world wide web totally sucks, but it's not his fault, if only they would have listened to him. And he verbally attacked a nice guy from Netscape (Martin Haeberli -- Paul's brother) for lame reasons, when there were plenty of other perfectly valid things to rag the poor guy about. >Don't get me wrong -- I've got my own old worn-out copy of the double sided Dream Machines / Computer Lib, as well as Literary Machines, which I enjoyed and found very inspiring. I first met the Xanadu guys some time ago in the 80's, when they were showing off Xanadu at the MIT AI lab. >I was a "random turist" high school kid visiting the AI lab on a pilgrimage. That was when I first met Hugh Daniel: this energetic excited big hairy hippie guy in a Xanadu baseball cap with wings, who I worked with later, hacking NeWS. Hugh and I worked together for two different companies porting NeWS to the Mac. >I "got" the hypertext demo they were showing (presumably the same code they've finally released -- that they were running on an Ann Arbor Ambassador, of course). I thought Xanadu was neat and important, but an obvious idea that had been around in many forms, that a lot of people were working on. It reminded me of the "info" documentation browser in emacs (but it wasn't programmable). >The fact that Xanadu didn't have a built-in extension language was a disappointment, since extensibility was an essential ingredient to the success of Emacs, HyperCard, Director, and the World Wide Web. >I would be much more interested in reading about why Xanadu failed, and how it was found to be inadequate, than how great it would have been if only it had taken over the world. >Anyway, my take on all this hyper-crap is that it's useless without a good scripting language. I think that's why Emacs was so successful, why HyperCard was so important, what made NeWS so interesting, why HyperLook was so powerful, why Director has been so successful, how it's possible for you to read this discussion board served by Frontier, and what made the World Wide Web what it is today: they all had extension languages built into them. >So what's Xanadu's scripting language story? Later on, in the second version, they obviously recognized the need for an interactive programming language like Smalltalk, for development. >But a real-world system like the World Wide Web is CONSTANTLY in development (witness all the stupid "under construction" icons), so the Xanadu back and front end developers aren't the only people who need the flexibility that only an extension language can provide. As JavaScript and the World Wide Web have proven, authors (the many people writing web pages) need extension languages at least as much as developers (the few people writing browsers and servers). >Ideally, an extension language should be designed into the system from day one. JavaScript kind of fits the bill, but was really just nailed onto the side of HTML as an afterthought, and is pretty kludgey compared to how it could have been. >That's Xanadu's problem too -- it tries to explain the entire universe from creation to collapse in terms of one grand unified theory, when all we need now are some practical techniques for rubbing sticks together to make fire, building shelters over our heads to keep the rain out, and convincing people to be nice and stop killing each other. The grandiose theories of Xanadu were certainly ahead of their time. >It's the same old story of gross practicality winning out over pure idealism. >Anyway, my point, as it relates to Xanadu, and is illustrated by COM (which has its own, more down-to-earth set of ideals), is that it's the interfaces, and the ideas and protocols behind them, that are important. Not the implementation. Code is (and should be) throw-away. >There's nothing wrong with publishing old code for educational purposes, to learn from its successes and mistakes, but don't waste your time trying to make it into something it's not.

tannhaeuser 9y ago
> Anyway, my take on all this hyper-crap is that it's useless without a good scripting language. I think that's why Emacs was so successful, why HyperCard was so important, what made NeWS so interesting, why HyperLook was so powerful, why Director has been so successful, how it's possible for you to read this discussion board served by Frontier, and what made the World Wide Web what it is today: they all had extension languages built into them. I'm wondering what your wiser, older self has to say about this 20 years on. Isn't it useful that documents you wrote 20 years ago can still be read? From my memories, the Web craze started well before JavaScript, and JavaScript really only jumped on the bandwagon; so how could it be the critical success factor for the Web? The success of the Web and JavaScript in the last two decades speaks for itself; but in 2018, JavaScript and the procedural Web could very well be its undoing when considering the original goals of the Web, couldn't it?
- dvanduzer 9y ago
  I don't think Don meant that JS was the critical success factor for the Web. But that extensible scripting is crucial to the kind of Web Ted Nelson wanted in the first place. From my lived experience, the Web craze would be better termed the Modem craze. And the critical success factor that turned it into the Web, was NSF removing the restrictions on commerce in 1995. JavaScript is just what got HTML closer to some ideals of Xanadu. Not close enough for Ted's vision, but that is a broad sociopolitical vision.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    Server side scripting languages were critical to the success of the web, before browser side JavaScript was available and matured. Simple stateless perl cgi scripts forked from apache that talk to text databases or mysql were the first simplest step, but things got much more interesting with long running stateful application servers like Zope (Python), Java, Radio UserLand, HyperCard, node, etc. My favorite thing about node is that it lets you use the same language and libraries and data on both the client and server side. That's an enormous advantage that far outweighs JavaScript's disadvantages. But some people just can't see or believe that, for whatever reason, and they're fine with flipping and flopping back and forth between different languages, and hiring different people to write multiple subtly divergent versions of everything in different languages. Face it: for all its faults, JavaScript won. I will always have a place in my heart for FORTH, PostScript, MockLisp, ScriptX, TCL, Python, HyperTalk, UserTalk, CFML, Java, and all those other weird obsolete scripting languages, but it's soooo much easier to program in one language without switching context all the time, even if it's not the best language in the universe. And TypeScript is a pretty darn good way of writing JavaScript. You're right, the web was held back until it was finally considered "ok" to use it for commercial activity! I'd say JavaScript is just what got HTML closer to implementing any ideal you want, and there's no reason Xanadu couldn't be implemented on top of current web technologies (except that Ted doesn't want to). But I don't think extensibility and scripting itself was part of Ted's original vision or implementation. Just as so much has happened since MVC was invented (yet it's still religiously applied by cargo-cult programmers), also so much has happened since Xanadu was invented (like distributed source code control, for example), which requires a total rethinking from basic principles. We also have the benefit of a lot of really terrible examples and disasterous experiments to learn from (wikipedia markup language, wordpress, etc). Many of Ted's principles should be among those basic principles considered, but they're not the only ones.

textfiles 9y ago

Hmm. I could show where your dashed-off summary is wrong by knocking down the other three, or educating you on Ted's context. I'll go with education, as Ted would prefer. You are confusing "I heard their names" with "They made the thing I use". Berners-Lee didn't write the browser you use. Kay isn't hard at work on the new iPhone. and Engelbart doesn't pop into the Logitech offices to see how the new controls are going. Nelson wrote multiple critical works of theory and practice, edited very influential magazines, coded prototypes and processes that were then re-used or modified as time went on, and has continually spoken on his principles and ideas behind the interface of humans and machines. He has stressed, for over half a century, the importance of the treatment and access of information, which turns out to be the top priority of the human race in the contemporary sphere. Ted's name has been brought up in meetings you're not invited to and events you can't attend, as well as ones you could be. His influence is gigantic, and the fact he freely shares his ideas past the age of 80 is a gift some of us appreciate very much. He doesn't strut across a stage next to a product he yelled at others to make. That doesn't make him less of a giant.

randallsquared 9y ago
> He doesn't strut across a stage next to a product he yelled at others to make. Is that what you believe Berners-Lee, Engelbart, and Kay were doing?
- wcarron 9y ago
  I think he kind of fell off-topic there, too. I interpreted it as a very non-sequitur dig at Steve Jobs. Either way, not relevant to the conversation.
  - textfiles 9y ago
    I was merely attesting to the two main criteria that many modern students of technology equate with "greatness"; either a straight-up declaration of a Name, or by seeing the Great One on some sort of blackish back-lit stage with a product announcement. Keep up.

noblethrasher 9y ago

On the other hand, Ted has commanded the admiration of some people that you probably consider to be great minds, such as Drs. Engelbart and Kay.

tudorw 9y ago

wrong. go read some more.

tudorw 9y ago
wrong, as in, false statement, there is evidence Ted has shipped software, your statement is wrong. "The other three actually build stuff that is now everywhere. Ted never got anywhere." This is patently ridiculous, it's like accusing Socrates of not creating the perfect society, I'm proud to wear a -1 on this, it means I'm annoying at least one other ill informed person.
- _mhr_ 9y ago
  I suggest linking to sources to read next time.
  - tudorw 9y ago
    what, like google, it's Ted Nelson and we are on hacker news, and the OP passed a comment that showed they obviously already know how to use the internet, what would be the point of me linking to sources, Ted Nelson, Computer Lib and Dream Machines, if you've not read it, what have you read?

nzeribe 9y ago

Ted Nelson's ideas continue to point a road to the future, to a better internet. Sir Tim's Web has been creaking along, almost since it's inception due to it's fragile design. That you don't rank him alongside the other three only says that you don't understand - which is fine.

kabes 9y ago
I didn't say his ideas aren't good. I'm saying I value execution more than ideas. Everybody has good ideas, few do a good execution. It's like somebody had the idea to create a teleportation device, in 50 years time got absolutely nowhere with it and is now grumpy that the planes everybody uses are too slow. "If only they'd followed my idea of a teleportation device, everything would've been much better."