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Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past (2018)
- meremortals 4y agoWish Lex Fridman would interview Ted!
- matesz 4y agoThought about this few times as well. This has to happen!
- ramesh31 4y agoI’m sad that we no longer have any Ted Nelson’s in the world of tech. There’s simply too much money now for smart people to waste their time on “interesting” things.
- kastagg 4y agoNot everyone is working at whichever shop offers the highest salary. There are many smart people who are willing to take a pay cut to work on interesting problems. There are some smart people who are already financially secure so that they could afford a pay cut.
- openfuture 4y agoOh we definitely still have Ted Nelsons, what we don't have is a way to find them. Right now people are lost deep in some social media private groups and the surface level information is all war, disease and drugs.
- carapace 4y agoFirst off, we still have THE Ted Nelson! He's old but he ain't dead yet. (He might even read this thread!?) - - - - There are some modern day Ted Nelsons: Sean Mcdirmid comes to mind. (He's on HN. Dude, didn't you used to have a blog?) https://www.youtube.com/user/seanmcdirmid https://www.youtube.com/user/seanmcdirmid https://confengine.com/user/sean-mcdirmid https://confengine.com/user/sean-mcdirmid Or Jonathan Edwards https://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm https://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm There's the folks behind Enso/Luna https://enso.org/ https://enso.org/ among others. Jef Raskin's son Asa is still doing things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin
- Cupertino95014 4y agoCorrect. Engelbart IS dead, RIP. If you get a chance to see Nelson, do it. You never know if you'll get another chance.
- azeirah 4y agoThere's a whole subculture of super cool developers who take inspiration from the whole Ted Nelson, Alan Kay/PARC, Douglas Engelbart, Bret Victor branch of software history; ie, visionaries. Two are listed below, but there are many more. Nicky case is one of the most well known ones, Bret Victor himself is very well known and very active. There're also a lot of lesser known people in the space, - Patrick Dubroy: wrote Ohm, makes cool stuff - @azlenelza on Twitter - @codexeditor on Twitter: He's building by far the most professional, serious and very very inventive digitised text... system? I have no idea what to call it. It's far far beyond what Roam, Obsidian etc can do. I think Ted would love to have a conversation with this guy. It goes deep in all directions. - Andy Matuschak is worth mentioning. Goes deep into learning and memory research, and building tools around this. - Tudor Girba @girba on twitter, makes moldable software environments: Tl;dr, tools to make custom IDEs in seconds to minutes that fit your current task perfectly. Very interesting stuff built on Pharo smalltalk - Omar @rsnous on Twitter, posts thought experiments about weird interactions with computers multiple times per week. Sometimes cool ideas come out of it : Of course not all of these people are or will be visionaries of the same level as Ted, but these are all people working to experiment with the status quo, or step out of it completely.
- chillpenguin 4y agoFitting with your list, I would add the Croquet team, who are continuing Engelbart's legacy of collaborative multi-user software. Some of them are on twitter as well.
- verisimilitudes 4y agoIf I may nominate myself, take a look at my work, why not?
- stew-j 4y agoAfter a cursory look I found it interesting. Homoiconocity of assembly language isn't something I had thought of--although I have been working on a higher level S-expression based assembly that is lowered to more concrete assembly for Scheme86 microcoded emulation. I'm no genius for sure, but even when I do sometimes find myself ahead of the curve, I fall into Hamlet's dilemma: "...Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of Thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of action." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I I wish I could explain why the best people and ideas are ignored, or bullied away, but I am at a loss. Best wishes.
- verisimilitudes 4y agoI appreciate the praise. The base of much of my work involves removing what we currently consider to be text from computing, on both ends. An assembler with its language is inferior to my machine code development tool with an interactive interface filled with redundant information; on the other end, I don't believe we should store text as characters, and I'm currently making progress on that. I found no way to contact the author of this, as an example, but it's similar, except I'm making some progress: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32495133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32495133 I've largely given up on promoting my novel work here, as it never makes the front page, and none of my work ever gets any interesting comments whenever it does.
- stew-j 4y ago> I don't believe we should store text as characters Could you briefly elaborate? [edit] I read the article on your HN link. I didn't quite "get it". Program text gets in the way, let's replace it with [?]. Dr. Strandh at U. of Bordeaux, et al., have argued that we shouldn't store programs as text files in an operating system--is that what you are advocating? An image based system, for example? > none of my work ever gets any interesting comments whenever it does Sorry for my part in that, most people don't find me interesting. :) My work doesn't get much attention either, even if someone else happens upon it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Common_Lisp/comments/ezruuc/tovero_a_3d_modeling_system_for_common_lisp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Common_Lisp/comments/ezruuc/tovero_... ---- I don't know why I keep quoting Shakespeare this week, I mostly slept through the Shakespeare module in high school English, but I guess some filtered through and maybe WRT promotion on the Internet: "Had I so lavish of my presence been, so common-hackneyed in the eyes of men, so stale and cheap to vulgar company, opinion, that did help me to the crown, had still kept loyal to possession and left me in reputeless banishment, a fellow of no mark nor likelihood." Henry IV, Part 1, Act 3, Scene 2 It seems to me like for the most part only the best connected, ruthless, garrulous, overly vocal people get their ideas heard. I've tried business development orgs (including personal connections), directly contacting relevant researchers or sources of funding, on and on. Mostly, the advice has been to throw the spaghetti on the wall (put up a Github project, e.g.) and see what sticks (yell on Twitter, try to get some users). Even one of the founders of this site had difficulty marketing his idea for a new variant of Lisp, you know.
- AlbertCory 4y agoLittle known fact: Ted Nelson worked at DataPoint in the early 1980s, for a couple years. How many people have even heard of DataPoint anymore? They were hugely successful in the 1970s with their fancy terminals, arguably had the first personal computer, and viewed Ted as a prestige hire. It didn't work out well as they faded into obscurity. He's mentioned in the third person in my book https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks. but he doesn't appear as a character.
- bitwize 4y agoFun fact: The Intel 8008 was intended to be a single-chip CPU for the Datapoint 2200 terminal. It was delayed so ultimately wasn't used in the Datapoint 2200, but Intel had an agreement in place to sell the chip to other buyers. So that means every x86-64 PC sold has an ISA with a compatibility lineage that goes straight back to Datapoint.
- AlbertCory 4y agoThere's a book on Datapoint that I read, as research for my book. I read these things so you don't have to :) I'm also in touch with Gordon Peterson, the chief architect of ARCNet, which was a pretty decent LAN, way ahead of everyone else.
- stew-j 4y agoMore fun facts from "Programming the 80386", Crawford and Gelsinger (chief architect and designer of the 386 respectively), 1987, pp. 1-2 "The 4004 was quickly enhanced to the 8008. These devices, very trivial by today's standards, were novel but hardly taken seriously as computers of any worth...In 1978 the third generation was introduced--the 8086. This marked the beginning of microprocessors as 'real' computers...The 8088, the little brother of the 8086, was used in the IBM personal Computer...and this launched the personal computer revolution." I wish someone else would have read that for me.
- jacquesm 4y agoI think that's a pretty Intel centric view of things. Well before 1978 there were the 6502 (1975, MOS Technology) and the 6800 (1974, Motorola). Those were very much 'real' computers compared to the 8008.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoInstead of Ted Nelson telling the world what everyone can learn from him, I would like to hear him talk about what he learned from the real world. Xanadu is probably the biggest vaporware in the history of computing. Maybe some lessons learned about how he had all these “brilliant” ideas but never actually made something that actual people actually use. But that would require humility, introspection, and self-awareness so it is not likely to happen.
- cryo 4y agoOn one side the Xanadu implementations over the decades are a complete failure. On the other side, imho some of the ideas will survive and one day make it into successful software projects. Good ideas aren't destroyed by poor excecution.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoThen again as Steve Jobs said: “ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”
- cryo 4y agoIn terms of quickly making money this is true. But here I'd like to think about likely world changing tech. As long as the (successful) execution comes one day, it doesn't matter if it happens 20 years ago or 10 years from now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Rochus 4y ago> ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Maybe if you only have a business focus. He was apparently not interested in fundamental research.
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- mxmilkiib 4y agohttps://youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson https://youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson
- andsoitis 4y agoThe subtitle says Ted was the inventor of hypertext, but in the interview he credits Doug Engelbart. You can hear him say it if you listen from 4:30 to 4:45. "We thought computing would be artisanal. We did not imagine great monopolies." Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the "we" refers to). "... artistic expression ..." Reminds me a lot of when Jaron Lanier talks about how he envisioned VR.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ssivark 4y ago> Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the "we" refers to). To unwrap that, the “power” of great efficiencies of scale, but also “weakness” from the lack of adaptability and resilience inherent to monocultures. The jury is still out on which way the balance swings — especially because the former manifests in “typical events” while the latter manifests in “tail events”. Post pandemic disruptions of logistical supply chains and supply-chain vulnerabilities in software, I think folks seem to (or at least ought to) be far more apprehensive of blindly submitting to network effects. In summary, it’s surprising to me that even in hindsight people seem so enamored with network effects to be blind to the cons.
- AlbertCory 4y agoRight. No one in 1963 was imagining billions of people with a computer. Watch "Mad Men" if you want to time-travel.
- gardenfelder 4y agoTed coined the term "hypertext"; he built a prototype Xanadu platform [1] which incorporated it. Engelbart created an editing system which used something like hypertext internally. Ted coined the term in 1963, along with "hypermedia" [2]; Engelbart published a paper in 1962 [3]; you can read it and decide for yourself whether he "invented" hypertext (by any name) in that paper. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext [3] https://dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906-Framework.html https://dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906-Framework.html Note that [1] says 1960 for Xanadu and [2] says 1963 for the term hypertext. Go figure. Edit: fixed typo
- irogers 4y ago
- matesz 4y agoReally not nice of you to post this without linking Ted’s response. To anyone interested here it is http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com.au:80/ararat http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com....
- zasdffaa 4y agoWow, that was a full-on riposte.
- bitwize 4y agoThe quotes you chose seem suggest you were trying to insinuate Nelson was grooming those kids. Maybe that's what the author was trying to insinuate as well. Facts supporting this insinuation are, unfortunately, absent.
- mistrial9 4y agoI was a kid at some WELL parties - disingenuous reporters, Hollywood opportunists and Ivy Elites are not unknown to the artists, troopers and perverts that actually did lots of interesting things, with society dog-piling in.
- moffkalast 4y agoTIL about Douglas Engelbart, such a visionary that even Occam's razor says he ought to be a time traveller.
- teddyh 4y agoAfter watching The Mother of All Demos at <https://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html https://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html>, I suggest you also read this: https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PA97 https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PA97 It’s an anonymized account (from 1982) of what happened to Douglas Engelbart (anonymized as “Vision” Stanley).
- turtleyacht 4y agoA glut of very affordable, yet relevant, books from days of yore--many scanned, some still retained as physical treasures--marks the nascent field of computer science. I read and re-read parts of "Principles of Program Design" (1975) and type little C programs from King's "Modern C" (1996). The new wonders may come from familiarity with bare metal, algorithms, and the desire to build the "virtual machine" to solve each problem. It's a slow process. I draw out the boxes and stare blearily at COBOL examples. M.A. Jackson is the invisible guide, silent but for his proclamations. Each (non-UML) schematic logic accompanied by a single anxious thought: Am I doing this right?
- UncleEntity 4y agoI like learning from the past, when they were letting people download papers for free due to covid I got enough to keep me busy for a long time — just need to find the time to do something with them because working outside tech means I have very little time for such things. Read some here and there, bother industry experts here, fun times. There’s a lot of good ideas buried in the past out there that never took off because people adopted some other way due to that being what the textbooks teach or whatever. Most of what I look at isn’t applicable to anything I do, unless I were to find a pile of money so I could write a compiler, but I find it interesting and like messing with language grammars and compiler theory. Someday I might even get past the AST stage with my playing around.
- tpoacher 4y agoI was listening to a podcast a few years back, I think it was fortran related, and in any case, the guys talking were having fun putting their "old farts complaining about kids and their scateboards" hat on. At some point the conversation went a bit like this: - Do you know what else kids these days don't do? - What? - They don't declare all their variables at the top. - What? - Yep - They don't? - Nope - W ... where do they declare them then? - Right before they use them. - No! - I shit you not. - Wtf I remember laughing hard, and realising I'm also becoming an old fart who complains about kids and their scateboards and shudders at the thought of variable declarations sprinkled thoughout code. :p
- Pepe1vo 4y agoBeing very much a kid (at heart at least), I'll wager the question: what's the case against declaring variables as you need them? Also, at the top of which scope are you supposed to declare variables, function scope, class scope, ... somewhere else?
- saghm 4y ago> Being very much a kid (at heart at least), I'll wager the question: what's the case against declaring variables as you need them? There's not really one, it's just a joke about how some languages used to work. > Also, at the top of which scope are you supposed to declare variables, function scope, class scope, ... somewhere else? In C, you used to have to declare all local variables at the top of the function rather than throughout the body.
- jfoutz 4y agoWhat? you want your compiler to backtrack and recalculate all the stack offsets? Just say how many bytes a call needs up front! Kids today, acting like computer time is free.
- xenomachina 4y ago> In C, you used to have to declare all local variables at the top of the function rather than throughout the body. This is true, but support for block-scoped (as opposed to function-scoped) variable declarations was added to C a long time ago. Every version of ANSI C supports them, and this stack exchange answer, https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/300274/19196 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/300274/19196, suggests that support was added to K&R C since at least 1978.
- labrador 4y agoIf this interests you I recommend "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" by John Markoff and "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" by the BBC and Adam Curtis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
- cxr 4y agoHoward Rheingold's book "Tools For Thought" profiles Ted (along with Engelbart, Licklider, and other familiar names). And you can read it for free nowadays from the author's own site. <http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/index.html#index http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/index.html#index>
- labrador 4y agoThanks, this is fantastic. I see this and raise you "Seattle Mystic Alfred M. Hubbard: Inventor, Bootlegger and Psychedelic Pioneer" by Brad Holden https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57536256-seattle-mystic-alfred-m-hubbard https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/57536256-seattle-myst... Alfred M. Hubbard had an influence on Silicon Valley that is not well known. From my copy of the book, page 73: "Meanwhile, as Hubbard crisscrossed the globe, he began hearing murmurs about a group of engineers and scientists in San Francisco who were expressing a strong interest in experiencing one of his guided trips [LSD]. They were located in a stretch of land that would eventually become known as Silicon Valley, and being a fellow inventor himself, the good Captain had every intention of paying them a visit"
- AlbertCory 4y ago> How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry .. and how it didn't. Confessing I haven't actually read the book, but I've certainly read reviews & other articles about it. Hippies did not build the Internet. Or the personal computer industry. They were around and some jumped on it early, but it's clickbait to say they built it. The TV series "Halt and Catch Fire" is actually a better picture of that era (Season One, at least).
- 8bitsrule 4y agoTwo TN vid's on YT without IEEE's player ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZgkNoLdAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZgkNoLdAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i67rQdHuO-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i67rQdHuO-8 80 TN minutes at the 2021 Vintage Computer Festival East https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vb0FwsMqn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vb0FwsMqn0