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I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managi
by skadamat 8y ago
I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them.
Some good ones:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1R2jH4PQEo
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9c7_8Gp7gI
Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context. The programming parts aren't ever the point, he's deeply interested in how as humans we improve our ability to collaboratively manage systems.
- asdffdsa321 8y agoBut can he solve a whiteboard coding question in 30 minutes?
- jonsen 8y agoHe will get away with small talk.
- stingraycharles 8y agoOk normally I don’t approve of these types of comments on HN, but this was witty. For those who do not get the reference, Alan Kay is the inventor of SmallTalk: http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/ http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/
- aantix 8y agoI love how you revealed that you dislike joke comments on HN and unintentionally killed it at the same time.
- stingraycharles 8y agoDidn’t intent on killing the joke, I was hoping it would allow more people to appreciate it. But apparently I failed at that. :)
- aantix 8y agoNo worries. :) "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." -- Elwyn Brooks White
- fouc 8y agoIsn't a joke "alive" until the explanation? So those that 'got' the joke would've enjoyed the joke, before moving onto read the next line. So reading the explanation of the joke wouldn't interfere with their enjoyment of the joke since they already enjoyed it prior to reading the explanation.
- aantix 8y agoIf you're telling a joke, you don't want emotional context switching. A quick explanation, laughter might be preserved (so the above pun may or may not inhibit the execution of the original joke). But every joke has an emotional gravity and the longer you compliment it with other emotions (e.g. intellectual explanations), eventually escape velocity is reached and you're in an entirely different emotional state. Airplane! has three laughs per minute on average (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/09/21/top-10-funniest-movies-ever-as-measured-in-laughs-per-minute/#2d4080493c40 https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewbender/2012/09/21/top-10-...). That's not much time pull in other emotional states. And that's on purpose.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PinkMilkshake 8y agoThis thread is so HN. Post -> Comment on Post -> Analysis of Comment -> Analysis of Analysis -> Analysis of the act of Analysis -> Question truth itself. It's like that Wikipedia phenomenon where all articles lead to philosophy.
- exolymph 8y agoI don't think the explanation killed the joke. As someone who wouldn't have gotten it otherwise, it made me able to appreciate the pun.
- josephcooney 8y agoDisagree. It killed it.
- therealchiko 8y agoAgreed, it definitely did.
- 0xEFF 8y agoDead as a doornail.
- booleandilemma 8y agoGotta provide some context for the project management professionals who are reading this thread, I guess.
- skadamat 8y agoSome more talks by Alan, for people who are interested: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
- copperx 8y ago> Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work I'm curious. I wasn't aware of this. What are these strong opinions about?
- skadamat 8y agoCommon ones I hear: - He hasn't shipped anything popular (he's a researcher, expanding the tree of knowledge, not an engineer optimizing for shipping) - Smalltalk isn't as great as Alan makes it out to be (again he's a researcher) - That the computer revolution has happened but he's stuck in the 70's - Many, many more things
- romwell 8y agoBeing stuck in the 70's isn't that bad, many avantgarde things from that era still have to make it to mainstream adoption.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoI watched a presentation on YouTube that Christopher Alexander did in 1996, talking about work he did in the 70s and it continued to amaze me at its relevance today. +1 to you for realizing there are still a lot of good, under appreciated ideas out there and that technology actually moves super slow.
- nerpderp83 8y agoComputer tech folks have this stronger than healthy equation of new == good, old is wrong, needing replacement. Just because we do something doesn't make a better idea than ideas we had in the past that are not being used. There are lots of dead great ideas.
- jakecopp 8y agoCould I ask you what these are?
- 8y ago
- extralego 8y agoFor similar reasons, I highly recommend a book called Capital: Critique of Political Economy. And likewise, some people may have strong opinions about the author’s work. I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context.
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- HenryTheHorse 8y agoI can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or earnest.
- extralego 8y agoRead it and you will wonder no more.
- jjoonathan 8y agoThe descriptive work of he-who-shall-not-be-named is leagues ahead of his prescriptive work (not surprising -- fixing problems tends to be harder than finding them). The problems he addresses still abound and it's really a pity we have culturally suppressed the vocabulary and arguments he put forward to talk about them. So, my guess: serious.
- backpropaganda 8y agoFunny how when I replaced the big hyphenated word with the 4-letter name, it actually triggered an emotional response in me which made me dismiss the rest of your comment, even though I was fine with the comment without the substitution. Weird how human brains work.
- jjoonathan 8y agoEven crazier: I have the same emotional response to the substitution and I'm the one who wrote the comment.
- smhost 8y agoWhat did he mean at 1:09:22 (https://youtu.be/R1R2jH4PQEo?t=1h09m22s https://youtu.be/R1R2jH4PQEo?t=1h09m22s) when he says "nobody complains about multiplying one fraction by another because it looks reasonable, but it turns out it isn't reasonable at all"?
- rlayton2 8y agoI'm pretty sure he means "it is an easy equation to memorise, but it's not trivial". People can remember the formula, but have no idea how it actually works.
- alankay 8y agoMemorizing equations is "religion" not "math". "Understanding" is "math".
- freeflight 8y agoI wish more math teachers would actually understand this. The amount of crap I got for using the "wrong way" to calculate something in math class, was probably one of the major reason I never really got into it. I remember math classes in the beginning actually being fun, I loved figuring out more convenient/to me more logical ways to calculate something, only to be constantly shut down by the teachers for using them, as he/she demanded I use the solution given by the book. I do understand the value of getting to the same solution in different ways, I even did back then, but teachers didn't frame it like that; their insistence on the book solution just felt like an accusation against me of not understanding, telling me my way of calculating is wrong (even tho they usually proof calculated right) when to me it looked like it was them not understanding, by insisting on that one formalized, and often awkward, solution, and only that. So as a somewhat rebellious character, it didn't take long for me to start actually despising math classes. If I could go back I'd probably try to do it differently, I'm in my mid-30's now and consider myself "math illiterate". Sure I can do most basic stuff and even the occasional Pythagorean theorem (which fascinates me to this day, take two knowns to figure out the third unknown!), but I still feel like I missed out on something I could probably really have enjoyed.