5 ms·

Alan Kay on the context and catalysts of personal computing

222 points by yarapavan 5y ago

brandonmenc 5y ago
Every time Alan Kay speaks, I get smarter. And I don't mean "smarter" in a ted talk way.
- wsjtho55 5y ago
  He lost me when he started going on about “what’s wrong with our brains”. I have not given Alan Kay permission to declare me broken. His computing skills are legend, but he’s not a god.
dddw 5y ago
These notion articles are quite nice imo.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  It's also an amazing hiring ad. Apart from just being a cool and interesting product, stuff like this convinces me that the notion people have their head in the right place. Unfortunately I can't work in the states or I would've applied to them already.
- KnobbleMcKnees 5y ago
  I adore notion and will unironically shill it for them at any appropriate moment. so, er, yeah. GET NOTION.
  - jackdh 5y ago
    I enjoyed notion but stopped using it mainly due to the bad offline functionality (and occasionally getting randomly logged out). Has this been improved yet? (Desktop|IOS App)
    - d3nj4l 5y ago
      No, offline is still almost non-existent.
    - olah_1 5y ago
      You should really look at Anytype[1]. It is basically a better version of Notion[2] that uses IPFS and your social network to back up your data. [1]: https://anytype.io https://anytype.io [2]: because it is offline-first and has things like named relations, so you can connect information in any custom way that you like.
  - Hnus 5y ago
    I don't get how people can use notion for personal info or basically anything else if you are not forced to use it at work. Not even considering that your most personal information (journal, health log etc.) you don't share anywhere else twitter, facebook is stored in plaintext somewhere and can be used however they want according to their privacy policy which some nothing-to-hide folks might ok with but that everything you have written can go poof any second is nuts IMHO.
    - nbzso 5y ago
      People want a modern and cool tools with bangs and whistles. They 'have nothing to hide', they trust 'SaaS' as a collective agreement on "advancement' and 'inevitable mandatory future'. Corporations want data and control over UX. I see this as a happy relationship between owners with knowledge and slaves with lack of survival instinct. I can accept some form of work related security risk (Hi, Figma) but in general cannot give my intellectual property and businesses processes on any third party. In my company all the process tools are strictly FOSS and under my control. Personally speaking, tools as Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every 10 years just to feel "cool" and "modern". But hey it's a business, they have happy users and money whats more to ask for? Right?
      - uxcolumbo 5y ago
        > Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow More details on this? Anywhere I can read up on this. I like your principle - not to trust these SaaS tools with your personal data.
        nbzso 5y ago
        >Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative. https://www.slant.co/versus/8769/15790/~org-mode_vs_notion https://www.slant.co/versus/8769/15790/~org-mode_vs_notion There are a thousand reasons to invest in Emacs and org-mode. It is a personal choice. I like the speed and extendability. It is serious investment and requires remapping of ideas and habbits. But the last thing that I will part of are Emacs and Kynesys Advantage.:) Company-wise I choose to use this: https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ You can always learn about Org-mode: https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/ https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/
- np32 5y ago
  Devon Zuegel is a great thinker in a large breath of subjects -> On Urbanism: Her podcast Order without Design [0] where she interviews the Bertaud couple Fields note on Miami [1] (with beautiful pictures) Metamuse interview on cities [2] and a lot more on her blog On tech : She was the PM for Github sponsors (and I believe other open-source friendly projects), great interview of her by the changelog [4] The Pioneer series (of which this interview is an episod), favorites are Louis Pouzing and roundtable about Hamming [5] [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/order-without-design-how-markets-shape-cities/id1509606453 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/order-without-design-h... [1] https://devonzuegel.com/post/field-notes-miami https://devonzuegel.com/post/field-notes-miami [2] https://museapp.com/podcast/33-cities/ https://museapp.com/podcast/33-cities/ [3] https://changelog.com/podcast/370 https://changelog.com/podcast/370 [4] https://www.notion.so/blog/topic/pioneers https://www.notion.so/blog/topic/pioneers
cercatrova 5y ago
What a fascinating interview, I thought it was going to be all about tech but seems like Alan Kay knows a thing or two about political science as well.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yesenadam 5y ago
Such a great interview! Or rather, pontification: > See, what I'm doing here is I'm not conversing. I really can't converse very well at my age because I've lost my patience. So, what I do is pontificate, which is the same as giving you something like it's written. > This is why experienced programmers have big multiple screens. They're working on something where the result is going to be fit on one screen, but you have to have all this other stuff, it's like when you make an arch; it's not just piling up the bricks, you have to put this whole scaffolding up. You have to hold everything together until you get the keystone in place. And virtually all of the productivity tools that I've seen, I'll just say, "all" because I haven't seen all of them, but the ones I have seen, they just completely don't understand this at all. They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. And if you look at the way Disney artists do things, the whole thing is messy. This is something anybody in the arts knows completely about, and hardly anybody in computing knows anything about. But in fact, it's a key factor in building a good interactive development environment. > We were a floor culture at PARC so we not only had the bean bags instead of chairs. Why bean bags? Well, you can't leap to your feet to denounce somebody from a bean bag. This seemed an odd error: when Alan says (I presume) Feynman, the text has "Feinman" and links to a Richard Feinman.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  "If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend." - Richard P. Feynman The mislink is probably a rushed final editing pass.
- rjsw 5y ago
  Most of the transcripts of computing interviews that I see could use some proofreading by people who know the subject.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lincpa 5y ago
The "object-oriented programming" has no mathematical model support. So it cannot prove its scientificity. My "The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model" is based on the simple, classic, and widely used in social production practice, elementary school mathematics "water input/output of the pool" as a mathematical prototype, Therefore, it is scientific. https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow
locallost 5y ago
> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that reimplement stuff that already exists have this schtick about making it correctly, clean and efficient. He was mostly working on things really new so it had to be a mess. I just hate that the stuff I work on is a mess anyway even though it's nothing special at all.
- radiowave 5y ago
  It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ssivark 5y ago
    Because for the PARC folks from back in the day, the true vision for personal computing was to enable lots of people to do new things. That’s why Kay laments that the personal computing revolution is yet to happen.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Now let's apply that insight to the subproblems of your problem. And then to the subproblems of those subproblems. The way I see it, the tools we use to program - all the way from IDEs through programming languages to the very way we code in plaintext - make the process too damn slow, the feedback loop way too long. Messing around, trying and modifying and retrying until you get something good, it all takes too long, so we hardly do it.
- rektide 5y ago
moocowtruck 5y ago
i think the most interesting part about this post is the constitution using f's where s's would be and the history behind it lol
mikewarot 5y ago
The group of 35 people working to gather ideas, discuss, annotate, combine and edit, then send off to the printers to be typeset overnight, then repeating the process is a fascinating detail of how the US Constitution was built that I really, really wish they had taught in school. I always think of it as this old fashioned scroll thing with the weird letter S in it.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  I love it because it reframes the process to be as high-tech and as ultra-modern as they could make it at the time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mwcampbell 5y ago
Was this interview edited? If so, it seems to have been badly edited. Listening to the recording, I noticed one part in particular, where he's talking about catalysts in inorganic chemical reactions, and then he's talking about non-trivial engineering artifacts. If you listen closely, it sounds like a bad edit. This is at about 41:48.
neilv 5y ago
> There are so many more rabbit holes I would have liked to go down, but I think we're at our time now. So, thank you so much Alan for coming on the show. This was really fun. If Alan Kay willing to keep talking, why not keep him talking? You could turn it into a two-parter for whatever the show format is.
- Austin_Conlon 5y ago
  Although Quora seems widely disdained here, I’d recommend asking him any follow-up questions there, where he’s pretty responsive.
unraveller 5y ago
MP3 of the interview is available for one more day on https://huffduffer.com/ivanagas/623584 https://huffduffer.com/ivanagas/623584 https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/huffduff-video/youtube.com_watchv%3DLdMk0OP-0PA.mp3 https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/huffduff-video/youtube.com...

222 points by yarapavan 5y ago

brandonmenc 5y ago

Every time Alan Kay speaks, I get smarter. And I don't mean "smarter" in a ted talk way.

wsjtho55 5y ago
He lost me when he started going on about “what’s wrong with our brains”. I have not given Alan Kay permission to declare me broken. His computing skills are legend, but he’s not a god.

dddw 5y ago

These notion articles are quite nice imo.

d3nj4l 5y ago
It's also an amazing hiring ad. Apart from just being a cool and interesting product, stuff like this convinces me that the notion people have their head in the right place. Unfortunately I can't work in the states or I would've applied to them already.
KnobbleMcKnees 5y ago
I adore notion and will unironically shill it for them at any appropriate moment. so, er, yeah. GET NOTION.
- jackdh 5y ago
  I enjoyed notion but stopped using it mainly due to the bad offline functionality (and occasionally getting randomly logged out). Has this been improved yet? (Desktop|IOS App)
  - d3nj4l 5y ago
    No, offline is still almost non-existent.
  - olah_1 5y ago
    You should really look at Anytype[1]. It is basically a better version of Notion[2] that uses IPFS and your social network to back up your data. [1]: https://anytype.io https://anytype.io [2]: because it is offline-first and has things like named relations, so you can connect information in any custom way that you like.
- Hnus 5y ago
  I don't get how people can use notion for personal info or basically anything else if you are not forced to use it at work. Not even considering that your most personal information (journal, health log etc.) you don't share anywhere else twitter, facebook is stored in plaintext somewhere and can be used however they want according to their privacy policy which some nothing-to-hide folks might ok with but that everything you have written can go poof any second is nuts IMHO.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    People want a modern and cool tools with bangs and whistles. They 'have nothing to hide', they trust 'SaaS' as a collective agreement on "advancement' and 'inevitable mandatory future'. Corporations want data and control over UX. I see this as a happy relationship between owners with knowledge and slaves with lack of survival instinct. I can accept some form of work related security risk (Hi, Figma) but in general cannot give my intellectual property and businesses processes on any third party. In my company all the process tools are strictly FOSS and under my control. Personally speaking, tools as Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every 10 years just to feel "cool" and "modern". But hey it's a business, they have happy users and money whats more to ask for? Right?
    - uxcolumbo 5y ago
      > Notion cannot hold a candle on my Emacs org-mode workflow More details on this? Anywhere I can read up on this. I like your principle - not to trust these SaaS tools with your personal data.
      - nbzso 5y ago
        >Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative. https://www.slant.co/versus/8769/15790/~org-mode_vs_notion https://www.slant.co/versus/8769/15790/~org-mode_vs_notion There are a thousand reasons to invest in Emacs and org-mode. It is a personal choice. I like the speed and extendability. It is serious investment and requires remapping of ideas and habbits. But the last thing that I will part of are Emacs and Kynesys Advantage.:) Company-wise I choose to use this: https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/ You can always learn about Org-mode: https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/ https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/
np32 5y ago
Devon Zuegel is a great thinker in a large breath of subjects -> On Urbanism: Her podcast Order without Design [0] where she interviews the Bertaud couple Fields note on Miami [1] (with beautiful pictures) Metamuse interview on cities [2] and a lot more on her blog On tech : She was the PM for Github sponsors (and I believe other open-source friendly projects), great interview of her by the changelog [4] The Pioneer series (of which this interview is an episod), favorites are Louis Pouzing and roundtable about Hamming [5] [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/order-without-design-how-markets-shape-cities/id1509606453 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/order-without-design-h... [1] https://devonzuegel.com/post/field-notes-miami https://devonzuegel.com/post/field-notes-miami [2] https://museapp.com/podcast/33-cities/ https://museapp.com/podcast/33-cities/ [3] https://changelog.com/podcast/370 https://changelog.com/podcast/370 [4] https://www.notion.so/blog/topic/pioneers https://www.notion.so/blog/topic/pioneers

cercatrova 5y ago

What a fascinating interview, I thought it was going to be all about tech but seems like Alan Kay knows a thing or two about political science as well.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

yesenadam 5y ago

Such a great interview! Or rather, pontification: > See, what I'm doing here is I'm not conversing. I really can't converse very well at my age because I've lost my patience. So, what I do is pontificate, which is the same as giving you something like it's written. > This is why experienced programmers have big multiple screens. They're working on something where the result is going to be fit on one screen, but you have to have all this other stuff, it's like when you make an arch; it's not just piling up the bricks, you have to put this whole scaffolding up. You have to hold everything together until you get the keystone in place. And virtually all of the productivity tools that I've seen, I'll just say, "all" because I haven't seen all of them, but the ones I have seen, they just completely don't understand this at all. They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. And if you look at the way Disney artists do things, the whole thing is messy. This is something anybody in the arts knows completely about, and hardly anybody in computing knows anything about. But in fact, it's a key factor in building a good interactive development environment. > We were a floor culture at PARC so we not only had the bean bags instead of chairs. Why bean bags? Well, you can't leap to your feet to denounce somebody from a bean bag. This seemed an odd error: when Alan says (I presume) Feynman, the text has "Feinman" and links to a Richard Feinman.

mkr-hn 5y ago
"If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend." - Richard P. Feynman The mislink is probably a rushed final editing pass.
rjsw 5y ago
Most of the transcripts of computing interviews that I see could use some proofreading by people who know the subject.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lincpa 5y ago

The "object-oriented programming" has no mathematical model support. So it cannot prove its scientificity. My "The Grand Unified Programming Theory: The Pure Function Pipeline Data Flow with Principle-based Warehouse/Workshop Model" is based on the simple, classic, and widely used in social production practice, elementary school mathematics "water input/output of the pool" as a mathematical prototype, Therefore, it is scientific. https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow

locallost 5y ago

> They're all about this idea, which most programmers have that's wrong, is that you're going to write the program the right way. Nothing's going to be wrong. The whole idea is to make a fucking mess. I think he's great and I've learned a lot from him, but this is where I immediately disagreed. But it got me thinking and I realized it's because the stuff I work on is mostly a solved problem. So I think people that reimplement stuff that already exists have this schtick about making it correctly, clean and efficient. He was mostly working on things really new so it had to be a mess. I just hate that the stuff I work on is a mess anyway even though it's nothing special at all.

radiowave 5y ago
It happens that you don't get the insight into how to do something right until after you've made a few messes. I think Kay takes the view that the act of generating that insight is ultimately more valuable than the act of producing any one particular software artefact.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ssivark 5y ago
  Because for the PARC folks from back in the day, the true vision for personal computing was to enable lots of people to do new things. That’s why Kay laments that the personal computing revolution is yet to happen.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Now let's apply that insight to the subproblems of your problem. And then to the subproblems of those subproblems. The way I see it, the tools we use to program - all the way from IDEs through programming languages to the very way we code in plaintext - make the process too damn slow, the feedback loop way too long. Messing around, trying and modifying and retrying until you get something good, it all takes too long, so we hardly do it.
rektide 5y ago

moocowtruck 5y ago

i think the most interesting part about this post is the constitution using f's where s's would be and the history behind it lol

mikewarot 5y ago

The group of 35 people working to gather ideas, discuss, annotate, combine and edit, then send off to the printers to be typeset overnight, then repeating the process is a fascinating detail of how the US Constitution was built that I really, really wish they had taught in school. I always think of it as this old fashioned scroll thing with the weird letter S in it.

TigeriusKirk 5y ago
I love it because it reframes the process to be as high-tech and as ultra-modern as they could make it at the time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mwcampbell 5y ago

Was this interview edited? If so, it seems to have been badly edited. Listening to the recording, I noticed one part in particular, where he's talking about catalysts in inorganic chemical reactions, and then he's talking about non-trivial engineering artifacts. If you listen closely, it sounds like a bad edit. This is at about 41:48.

neilv 5y ago

> There are so many more rabbit holes I would have liked to go down, but I think we're at our time now. So, thank you so much Alan for coming on the show. This was really fun. If Alan Kay willing to keep talking, why not keep him talking? You could turn it into a two-parter for whatever the show format is.

Austin_Conlon 5y ago
Although Quora seems widely disdained here, I’d recommend asking him any follow-up questions there, where he’s pretty responsive.

unraveller 5y ago

MP3 of the interview is available for one more day on https://huffduffer.com/ivanagas/623584 https://huffduffer.com/ivanagas/623584 https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/huffduff-video/youtube.com_watchv%3DLdMk0OP-0PA.mp3 https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/huffduff-video/youtube.com...