6 ms·

Worrydream Refs

149 points by razin 7y ago

Jolter 7y ago
Context please?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- spiralganglion 7y ago
  worrydream.com is the website of Bret Victor, a popular researcher and proponent of computation as a new kind of dynamic media rather than simply a substrate for software. He's made a number of influential essays and talks, and is now working on a project called Dynamicland. His essays often reference great works of computer science, HCI, electrical engineering, and other related fields. This directory listing is full of such works.
Quekid5 7y ago
It's just a vehicle for this Idea Guy to peddle his completely impractical ideas... or it's Amazing Genius Guy demonstrating what we could totally do with only 1M in funding. (I do have actual proper detailed critiques of his ideas, but I find it drowns in the noise on HN. The above is an executive summary.) EDIT: It's kind of ironic that this "interactive or die" person is using PDFs. Why? I'm guessing it's because that's what actual people consume. Or maybe I don't understand irony.
- detaro 7y ago
  It's a collection of mostly quite old papers. PDF tends to be the canonical digital format for those without much extra effort.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  That seems pretty harsh. Some of his ideas have been hugely influential -- and practical. Like you, I'm unimpressed w an unencrypted page simply listing PDFs, but I do admire the "idea guy" himself - Bret Victor - for things like "Inventing on Principle" ^1 and "Up and down the ladder of abstraction" ^2 1. https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 2. http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
  - Quekid5 7y ago
    I think it was Inventing on Principle that got HN all wet in their knickers. Literally nothing of any practical value has come of it. Someone started a kickstarter/company for Lisp IDE (getting HN wet all again) based on some of these ideas. They failed. These ideas are not workable, sadly. (I really want a world where they are, but they aren't.) (Btw, 'rr' was already a thing, at least AFAIK.) EDIT: For the downvoters (not that I care): Name a single thing that came of it. Seriously. EDIT#2: This whole argument could be over soo soon... give me an example. C'mon people! (I find it funny that I'm usually deemed too idealistic for choosing Haskell...)
    - ethanbond 7y ago
      The influence of “out there” thinking like this is pretty hard to spot if you’re looking for a direct descendent. His talk on interactive computing has affected the way that I personally design and build products, so there you go. I’m sure the same is true for many others. This is like complaining that concept cars are bullshit because you haven’t seen a car that looks like one on Main St in Podunk, USA. As a sidenote, the “wet in the knickers” language and overall tone of these comments is extremely juvenile if you’re actually trying to have a good faith conversation about this.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >I think it was Inventing on Principle that got HN all wet in their knickers. Literally nothing of any practical value has come of it. (...) EDIT: For the downvoters (not that I care): Name a single thing that came of it. Seriously. Swift Playgrounds is obviously inspired by it, parts of which later made it into XCode proper [1]. Criss Lattner: "Playgrounds were heavily influenced by Bret Victor's ideas, by Light Table and by many other interactive systems." Now, I guess, to not admit defeat (which was previously premised on nothing of any practical value having come out of Inventing on Pricinple) your next step would be to belittle Swift Playgrounds as having no practical value. Not to mention that "what came of it" is hardly the best criterium to judge an idea. For one, our industry is not exactly the best at adopting things, or being driven by ideas and innovation. Corporate wise it's mostly about selling snake oil, reinventing BS and making 3Ghz/32GB computers feel slower than Pentiums with bloat... Second, because inspiration can take many forms, aside from direct implementation of the original idea. E.g. while Lighttable and Swift Playgrounds/XCode Playgrounds are based heavily on the program shown in the presentation, the presentation has wider ideas that go beyond the exact program shown (which is just an example to make the point). As such, it has already inspired many UI designers, and many UI choices, and many have admitted so - even if they don't make the same kind of programming environment. >They failed. These ideas are not workable, sadly. (I really want a world where they are, but they aren't.) Your comments don't make it like one who cares either way, they're mostly about putting down the "idea man" (how does one dare have ideas, and even worse non-practical ones? The gal! We should all be working on practical things, like the nth CRUD apps, some Electron UI, a Go/Rust rewrite of some backend service, etc). [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/402/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/402/
- emmelaich 7y ago
  > .. do have actual proper detailed critiques of his ideas Come, on; don't leave us hanging.
  - ethanbond 7y ago
    No no, they get drowned out in the noise (that grandparent him/herself is producing).
- blowski 7y ago
  I can't see what peddling he's doing here. Perhaps he just keeps them there as a library, and someone else shared the link.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Perhaps no peddling at all. Perhaps he just didn't bother to 403 direct access to a folder on his web server. (I actually wish more sites were doing this; quite often, a directory view is a better interface to the data than the website itself.)
  - Quekid5 7y ago
    That's a fair critique. It's not him posting.
- dang 7y ago
  Actual proper detailed critiques are ok, but shallow snarky name-calling dismissals are not. Please stick to the site guidelines when posting here. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
blowski 7y ago
I posted a link to https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love the other day. In addition the repo, they run meetups where they discuss the papers.
panic 7y ago
Some past HN discussions: Can Programming Be Liberated From The Von Neumann Style? (John Backus, 1977) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159792 A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Claude Shannon, 1948) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079826 Vannevar Bush symposium: Closing Panel (1995) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457056 Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (Seymour Papert, 1980) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361665 No Silver Bullet (Fred Brooks, 1986) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22084137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22084137 Opening the Hood of a Word Processor (Alan Kay, 1984) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352020 The Tyranny of the Clock (Ivan Sutherland, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966 Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language (William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, 1985) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233054 Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution (Lynn Conway, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140297 A Personal History of Modeless Text Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste (Larry Tesler, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670877 Robust Design Through Diversity (Gerald Sussman, 1999) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984899
dmux 7y ago
If you want to download all of the pdfs: wget --no-parent --accept pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/
- ivan_ah 7y ago
  I believe you need a `--recursive --level 1` in there too, so overall: wget --no-parent --accept pdf --recursive --level 1 http://worrydream.com/refs/
unixhero 7y ago
Looking forward to the next talk of your perspectives and ideas Bret!
thdrdt 7y ago
I really like to see what https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/ is doing at the moment. A team with bright minds, but so little news.
- jf 7y ago
  The team is back in research mode working on the next version of Realtalk
  - steveeq1 7y ago
    Do you know when their next open house is going to be? I went over there once, but it seems to be closed to the public. I subscribed to their newsletter, but no news.
- emmanueloga_ 7y ago
  I'm curious, how is this work funded? I see that they accept donations but I can't find any details on who the donors are. I wonder if their work is mostly self-funded.

Worrydream Refs

149 points by razin 7y ago

Jolter 7y ago

Context please?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
spiralganglion 7y ago
worrydream.com is the website of Bret Victor, a popular researcher and proponent of computation as a new kind of dynamic media rather than simply a substrate for software. He's made a number of influential essays and talks, and is now working on a project called Dynamicland. His essays often reference great works of computer science, HCI, electrical engineering, and other related fields. This directory listing is full of such works.

Quekid5 7y ago

It's just a vehicle for this Idea Guy to peddle his completely impractical ideas... or it's Amazing Genius Guy demonstrating what we could totally do with only 1M in funding. (I do have actual proper detailed critiques of his ideas, but I find it drowns in the noise on HN. The above is an executive summary.) EDIT: It's kind of ironic that this "interactive or die" person is using PDFs. Why? I'm guessing it's because that's what actual people consume. Or maybe I don't understand irony.

detaro 7y ago
It's a collection of mostly quite old papers. PDF tends to be the canonical digital format for those without much extra effort.
chrisweekly 7y ago
That seems pretty harsh. Some of his ideas have been hugely influential -- and practical. Like you, I'm unimpressed w an unencrypted page simply listing PDFs, but I do admire the "idea guy" himself - Bret Victor - for things like "Inventing on Principle" ^1 and "Up and down the ladder of abstraction" ^2 1. https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 2. http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
- Quekid5 7y ago
  I think it was Inventing on Principle that got HN all wet in their knickers. Literally nothing of any practical value has come of it. Someone started a kickstarter/company for Lisp IDE (getting HN wet all again) based on some of these ideas. They failed. These ideas are not workable, sadly. (I really want a world where they are, but they aren't.) (Btw, 'rr' was already a thing, at least AFAIK.) EDIT: For the downvoters (not that I care): Name a single thing that came of it. Seriously. EDIT#2: This whole argument could be over soo soon... give me an example. C'mon people! (I find it funny that I'm usually deemed too idealistic for choosing Haskell...)
  - ethanbond 7y ago
    The influence of “out there” thinking like this is pretty hard to spot if you’re looking for a direct descendent. His talk on interactive computing has affected the way that I personally design and build products, so there you go. I’m sure the same is true for many others. This is like complaining that concept cars are bullshit because you haven’t seen a car that looks like one on Main St in Podunk, USA. As a sidenote, the “wet in the knickers” language and overall tone of these comments is extremely juvenile if you’re actually trying to have a good faith conversation about this.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >I think it was Inventing on Principle that got HN all wet in their knickers. Literally nothing of any practical value has come of it. (...) EDIT: For the downvoters (not that I care): Name a single thing that came of it. Seriously. Swift Playgrounds is obviously inspired by it, parts of which later made it into XCode proper [1]. Criss Lattner: "Playgrounds were heavily influenced by Bret Victor's ideas, by Light Table and by many other interactive systems." Now, I guess, to not admit defeat (which was previously premised on nothing of any practical value having come out of Inventing on Pricinple) your next step would be to belittle Swift Playgrounds as having no practical value. Not to mention that "what came of it" is hardly the best criterium to judge an idea. For one, our industry is not exactly the best at adopting things, or being driven by ideas and innovation. Corporate wise it's mostly about selling snake oil, reinventing BS and making 3Ghz/32GB computers feel slower than Pentiums with bloat... Second, because inspiration can take many forms, aside from direct implementation of the original idea. E.g. while Lighttable and Swift Playgrounds/XCode Playgrounds are based heavily on the program shown in the presentation, the presentation has wider ideas that go beyond the exact program shown (which is just an example to make the point). As such, it has already inspired many UI designers, and many UI choices, and many have admitted so - even if they don't make the same kind of programming environment. >They failed. These ideas are not workable, sadly. (I really want a world where they are, but they aren't.) Your comments don't make it like one who cares either way, they're mostly about putting down the "idea man" (how does one dare have ideas, and even worse non-practical ones? The gal! We should all be working on practical things, like the nth CRUD apps, some Electron UI, a Go/Rust rewrite of some backend service, etc). [1] https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/402/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/402/
emmelaich 7y ago
> .. do have actual proper detailed critiques of his ideas Come, on; don't leave us hanging.
- ethanbond 7y ago
  No no, they get drowned out in the noise (that grandparent him/herself is producing).
blowski 7y ago
I can't see what peddling he's doing here. Perhaps he just keeps them there as a library, and someone else shared the link.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Perhaps no peddling at all. Perhaps he just didn't bother to 403 direct access to a folder on his web server. (I actually wish more sites were doing this; quite often, a directory view is a better interface to the data than the website itself.)
- Quekid5 7y ago
  That's a fair critique. It's not him posting.
dang 7y ago
Actual proper detailed critiques are ok, but shallow snarky name-calling dismissals are not. Please stick to the site guidelines when posting here. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

blowski 7y ago

I posted a link to https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love the other day. In addition the repo, they run meetups where they discuss the papers.

panic 7y ago

Some past HN discussions: Can Programming Be Liberated From The Von Neumann Style? (John Backus, 1977) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12159792 A Mathematical Theory of Communication (Claude Shannon, 1948) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12079826 Vannevar Bush symposium: Closing Panel (1995) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7457056 Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (Seymour Papert, 1980) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18361665 No Silver Bullet (Fred Brooks, 1986) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22084137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22084137 Opening the Hood of a Word Processor (Alan Kay, 1984) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16352020 The Tyranny of the Clock (Ivan Sutherland, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11995966 Lucid, the Dataflow Programming Language (William W. Wadge and Edward A. Ashcroft, 1985) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233054 Reminiscences of the VLSI Revolution (Lynn Conway, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18140297 A Personal History of Modeless Text Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste (Larry Tesler, 2012) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20670877 Robust Design Through Diversity (Gerald Sussman, 1999) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984899

dmux 7y ago

If you want to download all of the pdfs: wget --no-parent --accept pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/

ivan_ah 7y ago
I believe you need a `--recursive --level 1` in there too, so overall: wget --no-parent --accept pdf --recursive --level 1 http://worrydream.com/refs/

unixhero 7y ago

Looking forward to the next talk of your perspectives and ideas Bret!

thdrdt 7y ago

I really like to see what https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/ is doing at the moment. A team with bright minds, but so little news.

jf 7y ago
The team is back in research mode working on the next version of Realtalk
- steveeq1 7y ago
  Do you know when their next open house is going to be? I went over there once, but it seems to be closed to the public. I subscribed to their newsletter, but no news.
emmanueloga_ 7y ago
I'm curious, how is this work funded? I see that they accept donations but I can't find any details on who the donors are. I wonder if their work is mostly self-funded.