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Okay. Single fingers are a amazing input device because of dexterity. Flat phones are amazing because they fit in my pockets. Text search is amazing because wit

by RogerL 13y ago

Okay. Single fingers are a amazing input device because of dexterity. Flat phones are amazing because they fit in my pockets. Text search is amazing because with 26 symbols I can query a very significant portion of world knowledge (I can't search for, say, a painting that looks like a Van Gogh by some other painter, so there are limits, obviously). Maybe it is just a tone thing. Alan Kay did something notable - he drew the iPad, he didn't run around saying "somebody should invent something based on this thing I saw". Flat works, and so do fingers. If you are going to denigrate design based on that, well, let's see the alternative that is superior. I'd love to live through a Xerox kind of revolution again.

jfarmer 13y ago
Go watch these three talks of his: Inventing on Principle, Dynamic Drawings, and this keynote on YouTube (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-QJytzcd7Wo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-QJytzcd7Wo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-QJytzcd7Wo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatc...) Next, read the following essays of his: Explorable Explanations, Learnable Programming, and Up and Down The Ladder of Abstractions Do you still think he's all talk? Also, I can't tell if you were implying otherwise, butAlan Kay did a few other notable things like Smalltalk and OOP.
- RogerL 13y ago
  I've seen some of his stuff. I am reacting to a talk where all he says is "this is wrong". I've written about some of that stuff in other posts here, so I won't duplicate it. He by and large argues to throw math away, and shows toy examples where he scrubs a hard coded constant to change program behavior. Almost nothing I do depends on something so tiny that I could scrub to alter my algorithms. Alan Kay is awesome. He did change things for the better, I'm sorry if you thought I meant otherwise . His iPad sketch was of something that had immediately obvious value. A scrubbing calculator? Not so much.

by RogerL 13y ago

jfarmer 13y ago

Go watch these three talks of his: Inventing on Principle, Dynamic Drawings, and this keynote on YouTube (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-QJytzcd7Wo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-QJytzcd7Wo http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-QJytzcd7Wo&desktop_uri=%2Fwatc...) Next, read the following essays of his: Explorable Explanations, Learnable Programming, and Up and Down The Ladder of Abstractions Do you still think he's all talk? Also, I can't tell if you were implying otherwise, butAlan Kay did a few other notable things like Smalltalk and OOP.

RogerL 13y ago
I've seen some of his stuff. I am reacting to a talk where all he says is "this is wrong". I've written about some of that stuff in other posts here, so I won't duplicate it. He by and large argues to throw math away, and shows toy examples where he scrubs a hard coded constant to change program behavior. Almost nothing I do depends on something so tiny that I could scrub to alter my algorithms. Alan Kay is awesome. He did change things for the better, I'm sorry if you thought I meant otherwise . His iPad sketch was of something that had immediately obvious value. A scrubbing calculator? Not so much.