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What do you think of the Internet? Has it worked? Has it scaled? Is it reliable? Remember that Alan Kay, his team and his colleagues had a lot to do with this

What do you think of the Internet? Has it worked? Has it scaled? Is it reliable? Remember that Alan Kay, his team and his colleagues had a lot to do with this thing you are using to rant here :)

lmm 2y ago
> What do you think of the Internet? Has it worked? Has it scaled? Is it reliable? The internet has certainly grown and does certain things reliably, but it's also extremely difficult to control or change. For most business purposes, producing something like the internet would be a failure. > Remember that Alan Kay, his team and his colleagues had a lot to do with this thing you are using to rant here :) Given how difficult his ideas apparently are to convey and how little the programming paradigms that actually get used to make things embody them, I find that pretty dubious. E.g. didn't he explicitly disavow C++?
- atomicnature 2y ago
  Why'd anyone judge Alan Kay on making any particular biz succeed? He's been a big contributor to the "ideas ecosystem" as a researcher's researcher. It's like asking Bezos to care about the Internet as a technical concept ("Internet? Schminternet? I don't care as long as it delivers the best customer experience!"). Kay was and still is a dedicated researcher - and he has had great influence on people like Jobs/Bezos as well - behind the scenes. There are very few parts of modern technology untouched by his ideas. He's a Turing Award winner for a reason, you know. Re C++ - Kay's job as a researcher is not to defend whatever sh*t humans have figured out & are content with but to paint a picture of the future, build teams around it and demonstrate prototypes. He has done that exceedingly well I'd say.
  - lmm 2y ago
    Well, put it this way: in a world where Kay was a charlatan (not in the sense of deliberately lying, but in the sense of having just flash and no substance) who was in the right place at the right time, what would be different? How can I tell?
    - atomicnature 2y ago
      Newton spent 1/3rd of life pursuing Alchemy, another 1/3rd pursuing biblical prophecies. Paul Graham once said that Newton wasted so much of his life (basically PG thinks he knows what's worthy work and what is not - I mean exploring the factuality of "God" must obviously be nonsense - right?). Maybe you'd call Newton a Charlatan too - because hey - what biz did he make successful. I don't think either PG or most people on this forum are fit enough to judge what Kay is saying is of value or not. And I say this with utmost humility. These are scholarly researchers, who operate at the edge of human knowledge/insight. Who am I to judge Newton or someone of that calibre - question why he's interested in Alchemy? Or Kay says particular things which seem far-fetched to you or me. Continuing with the Newton analogy - I think one aspect with CS/Software is that it is a new field - you should not apply the definition of a "Charlatan" you'd use in a more established field such as Physics. Kay's agenda is to advance a nascent field. Just like Newton was dabbling with Alchemy before the establishment of the modern field of Chemistry.
      - lmm 2y ago
        The vast majority of people who worked on alchemy and biblical prophecies were either charlatans, or, at best, people who diligently researched the wrong thing. Their names are rightly mostly lost to history. Newton earned the respect we give him with his theories of gravity and calculus. He made concrete explanations that other people were able to understand and build on - even his enemies, who were many, could not deny the correctness of his results. And the whole edifice of science, engineering, and industry is built on that work - even today, Newton's laws of motion are something people have to learn and understand, and a lot of people do understand, and teachers distinguish between people who understood them and people who did not, and test whether people's understanding of them is correct or not. People judge Newton's work all the time, and they are right to do so. Did he spend a lot of his life on bullshit? Yes, probably. So does PG, so do any number of Nobel Prize winners. But we don't remember his name because of his work on alchemy and biblical prophecies. There's a huge difference between someone who did some productive work and some bullshit, and someone who only or mostly did the bullshit. And if you take the position that you aren't fit to judge who's a genius and who's a charlatan and you're not even going to try, you're going to get taken for a ride.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  "it's also extremely difficult to control or change" Hence its success. It is controllable and changeable exactly in the manners that are appropriate by those who should be able to control it and change it.
afiori 2y ago
Conway's law applies to the internet too. The internet is as distributed and decentralised as it is because it was made by a distributed and decentralized entity (thousands of companies and individuals). Had most of them been willing to coordinate and cooperate with each other we would have a very different internet.

What do you think of the Internet? Has it worked? Has it scaled? Is it reliable? Remember that Alan Kay, his team and his colleagues had a lot to do with this thing you are using to rant here :)

lmm 2y ago

> What do you think of the Internet? Has it worked? Has it scaled? Is it reliable? The internet has certainly grown and does certain things reliably, but it's also extremely difficult to control or change. For most business purposes, producing something like the internet would be a failure. > Remember that Alan Kay, his team and his colleagues had a lot to do with this thing you are using to rant here :) Given how difficult his ideas apparently are to convey and how little the programming paradigms that actually get used to make things embody them, I find that pretty dubious. E.g. didn't he explicitly disavow C++?

atomicnature 2y ago
Why'd anyone judge Alan Kay on making any particular biz succeed? He's been a big contributor to the "ideas ecosystem" as a researcher's researcher. It's like asking Bezos to care about the Internet as a technical concept ("Internet? Schminternet? I don't care as long as it delivers the best customer experience!"). Kay was and still is a dedicated researcher - and he has had great influence on people like Jobs/Bezos as well - behind the scenes. There are very few parts of modern technology untouched by his ideas. He's a Turing Award winner for a reason, you know. Re C++ - Kay's job as a researcher is not to defend whatever sh*t humans have figured out & are content with but to paint a picture of the future, build teams around it and demonstrate prototypes. He has done that exceedingly well I'd say.
- lmm 2y ago
  Well, put it this way: in a world where Kay was a charlatan (not in the sense of deliberately lying, but in the sense of having just flash and no substance) who was in the right place at the right time, what would be different? How can I tell?
  - atomicnature 2y ago
    Newton spent 1/3rd of life pursuing Alchemy, another 1/3rd pursuing biblical prophecies. Paul Graham once said that Newton wasted so much of his life (basically PG thinks he knows what's worthy work and what is not - I mean exploring the factuality of "God" must obviously be nonsense - right?). Maybe you'd call Newton a Charlatan too - because hey - what biz did he make successful. I don't think either PG or most people on this forum are fit enough to judge what Kay is saying is of value or not. And I say this with utmost humility. These are scholarly researchers, who operate at the edge of human knowledge/insight. Who am I to judge Newton or someone of that calibre - question why he's interested in Alchemy? Or Kay says particular things which seem far-fetched to you or me. Continuing with the Newton analogy - I think one aspect with CS/Software is that it is a new field - you should not apply the definition of a "Charlatan" you'd use in a more established field such as Physics. Kay's agenda is to advance a nascent field. Just like Newton was dabbling with Alchemy before the establishment of the modern field of Chemistry.
    - lmm 2y ago
      The vast majority of people who worked on alchemy and biblical prophecies were either charlatans, or, at best, people who diligently researched the wrong thing. Their names are rightly mostly lost to history. Newton earned the respect we give him with his theories of gravity and calculus. He made concrete explanations that other people were able to understand and build on - even his enemies, who were many, could not deny the correctness of his results. And the whole edifice of science, engineering, and industry is built on that work - even today, Newton's laws of motion are something people have to learn and understand, and a lot of people do understand, and teachers distinguish between people who understood them and people who did not, and test whether people's understanding of them is correct or not. People judge Newton's work all the time, and they are right to do so. Did he spend a lot of his life on bullshit? Yes, probably. So does PG, so do any number of Nobel Prize winners. But we don't remember his name because of his work on alchemy and biblical prophecies. There's a huge difference between someone who did some productive work and some bullshit, and someone who only or mostly did the bullshit. And if you take the position that you aren't fit to judge who's a genius and who's a charlatan and you're not even going to try, you're going to get taken for a ride.
TZubiri 2y ago
"it's also extremely difficult to control or change" Hence its success. It is controllable and changeable exactly in the manners that are appropriate by those who should be able to control it and change it.

afiori 2y ago

Conway's law applies to the internet too. The internet is as distributed and decentralised as it is because it was made by a distributed and decentralized entity (thousands of companies and individuals). Had most of them been willing to coordinate and cooperate with each other we would have a very different internet.