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Here's my issue with the "advancement" that Bret is doing. It's all conjecture. He has no product. He has no users. He has theories. Theories that sound good to

Here's my issue with the "advancement" that Bret is doing. It's all conjecture. He has no product. He has no users. He has theories. Theories that sound good to you and me, but, ultimately, theories that are untested and unproven. There's no evidence that any of these changes would actually help anyone learn to program any better. Who is to say that a person new to coding wouldn't be overwhelmed by the amount of information Bret's system is asking them to process? There's a pretty strong case for cognitive overload when you have lines of code, different code hints that appear not just over every line, but every function and number, a time bar with many different symbols on it, etc. But, again, no benefits or faults can be found with Bret's proposed approach because it's untested and unproven. Conjecture, hypotheses, and assumptions. This is where Khan Academy exceeds. They have users. They have real people really trying to learn how to code. This means they can test their assumptions and modify their approach. An imperfect solution delivered today is better than a perfect solution delivered next week.

chj 14y ago
I am a user of his ideas. I read through his article without taking a break, which rarely happen these days.
readymade 14y ago
Khan Academy and Bret Victor are apples and oranges -- they're not even playing the same game. In order to make any major strides, we have to reconcile the need for PRODUCTS, NOW! with the conceptual, exploratory approach taken here. Real world innovation often makes very small tweaks on proven formulae, whereas bold new ideas can have a long incubation period with seemingly little payoff at first. It's roughly the difference between business and research. While it's not possible to "test" these bare assertions in the sense you imply, they can certainly be argued for and against. And he makes a rather compelling case for it, certainly a more nuanced one than much of the criticism here on HN. In any event, he's begun sharing some of his code (I believe) and products like Light Table are emerging that appear to draw from very similar inspiration, if not his work directly. It would appear these ideas are gaining some traction.
- russelluresti 14y ago
  I disagree that real-world innovation isn't tested, iterated on, and improved. Look at flight and the Wright Brothers. They didn't just run numbers and present ideas. They built prototypes and tested their assumptions. That's what Bret needs to do. He needs to build, test, iterate, and improve upon his ideas.
  - readymade 14y ago
    I think you're misreading my reply. It's not that real world innovation isn't tested and iterated on, quite the opposite. The Wright Brothers are exactly that model and I don't dispute that at all. What I'm drawing a distinction between is this approach to innovation, which is necessarily iterative and based on incremental improvements to prior art, and another approach which makes larger conceptual leaps and may not have obvious initial practicality. I described these two approaches as being roughly comparable to "business and research", although I admit that's a somewhat crude dichotomy. It is the latter camp that I think Victor falls in. Both are relevant. For every Wright Brothers you also have a Tim Berners Lee, whose invention was developed in an international research laboratory (not a startup) and was largely ingored by the public for several years. It took the perfect storm of the late 90s Internet boom for the web to develop into the thing we recognize today. In any case, it's not as though Victor has been doing nothing but writing papers and photoshopping mockups. If you look for them, you can find videos of him giving talks where he is demonstrating real, live software that implements his ideas. He has been refining them in practice for several years now, and others (such as Light Table's Chris Granger) are doing the same. The question is whether they will catch on, and the jury is still out as far as that's concerned.
    - russelluresti 14y ago
      You're right, I did misread your reply - I originally thought you said it was innovation that took laboratory time. Though, now that you've explained it further, I'm still not sure I agree with the concept. Pure research follows a specific method - you form ideas, form a hypothesis, create an experiment, and test your hypothesis, then revise and test again. There is nothing, ever, that is not tested. Though, you can certainly make the argument that a few of Bret's projects (such as Tangle) work as small-scale experiments for testing his larger ideas. I may actually concede that point; though it is not exactly the big picture he's talking about, it does test the tools he suggests using to achieve that big picture. And, I have seen the talks where he demonstrates his software. I just wish he would make it available (open source, sell it, whatever) so that others could use it and test it. Wouldn't you like to try out those tools he shows?

chj 14y ago

I am a user of his ideas. I read through his article without taking a break, which rarely happen these days.

readymade 14y ago

Khan Academy and Bret Victor are apples and oranges -- they're not even playing the same game. In order to make any major strides, we have to reconcile the need for PRODUCTS, NOW! with the conceptual, exploratory approach taken here. Real world innovation often makes very small tweaks on proven formulae, whereas bold new ideas can have a long incubation period with seemingly little payoff at first. It's roughly the difference between business and research. While it's not possible to "test" these bare assertions in the sense you imply, they can certainly be argued for and against. And he makes a rather compelling case for it, certainly a more nuanced one than much of the criticism here on HN. In any event, he's begun sharing some of his code (I believe) and products like Light Table are emerging that appear to draw from very similar inspiration, if not his work directly. It would appear these ideas are gaining some traction.

russelluresti 14y ago
I disagree that real-world innovation isn't tested, iterated on, and improved. Look at flight and the Wright Brothers. They didn't just run numbers and present ideas. They built prototypes and tested their assumptions. That's what Bret needs to do. He needs to build, test, iterate, and improve upon his ideas.
- readymade 14y ago
  I think you're misreading my reply. It's not that real world innovation isn't tested and iterated on, quite the opposite. The Wright Brothers are exactly that model and I don't dispute that at all. What I'm drawing a distinction between is this approach to innovation, which is necessarily iterative and based on incremental improvements to prior art, and another approach which makes larger conceptual leaps and may not have obvious initial practicality. I described these two approaches as being roughly comparable to "business and research", although I admit that's a somewhat crude dichotomy. It is the latter camp that I think Victor falls in. Both are relevant. For every Wright Brothers you also have a Tim Berners Lee, whose invention was developed in an international research laboratory (not a startup) and was largely ingored by the public for several years. It took the perfect storm of the late 90s Internet boom for the web to develop into the thing we recognize today. In any case, it's not as though Victor has been doing nothing but writing papers and photoshopping mockups. If you look for them, you can find videos of him giving talks where he is demonstrating real, live software that implements his ideas. He has been refining them in practice for several years now, and others (such as Light Table's Chris Granger) are doing the same. The question is whether they will catch on, and the jury is still out as far as that's concerned.
  - russelluresti 14y ago
    You're right, I did misread your reply - I originally thought you said it was innovation that took laboratory time. Though, now that you've explained it further, I'm still not sure I agree with the concept. Pure research follows a specific method - you form ideas, form a hypothesis, create an experiment, and test your hypothesis, then revise and test again. There is nothing, ever, that is not tested. Though, you can certainly make the argument that a few of Bret's projects (such as Tangle) work as small-scale experiments for testing his larger ideas. I may actually concede that point; though it is not exactly the big picture he's talking about, it does test the tools he suggests using to achieve that big picture. And, I have seen the talks where he demonstrates his software. I just wish he would make it available (open source, sell it, whatever) so that others could use it and test it. Wouldn't you like to try out those tools he shows?