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I'm always torn whenever I see a Bret Victor talk. On one hand, I agree with almost everything he says in the talk, amazed by the prototype tools he presents,

by spion 13y ago

I'm always torn whenever I see a Bret Victor talk. On one hand, I agree with almost everything he says in the talk, amazed by the prototype tools he presents, the concepts he discovered to make those tools usable. And I can see that in each talk he has some new insights to present, deeper connections, better and more general creations - and thats really exciting. On the other hand, his attitude that he doesn't plan to turn the tools into products, that they're just prototypes, that he expects someone else to come and create actual products - that rubs me the wrong way. The thing is, we've found excellent collaboration platforms exactly for these kind of prototypish things that we don't plan to make a product of yet we would like other people to toy around with the general idea. The most recent incarnation is GitHub. So why not publish some of these prototypes? Its not about the code, its about forming a community that will build upon those ideas. Its about kick-starting the construction, setting it in motion. As far as I can see, that is what Victor is hoping for - people taking these ideas close to their hearts and building them in reality. Is the idea not ready yet? Not exactly polished enough or general enough to be published? The visualization drawing / exploration tool looks like an awesome start to me... I don't understand. Edit: Oh wait. https://github.com/damelang/nile https://github.com/damelang/nile contains the presented Nile viewer. Nevermind.

austenallred 13y ago
One particular tweet from Victor explains his point of view quite poignantly, in what he calls the dichotomy between industry and research: "An 'Industry vs Research' dichotomy that I sketched at a conference. I probably should elaborate on it sometime. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/photo/1" https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho... One can understand why, given the options as viewed by Victor, one would choose "research" if given the choice.
- chm 13y ago
  I get an error that the page doesn't exist.
  - austenallred 13y ago
    The last " is sticking to the link. Delete that and it works. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/photo/1 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho...
- spion 13y ago
  Going through that list, this is what I think github style open-source prototype publishing would mean for the points made there: Left side of the board: - No need to ship anything. Its possible to just put whatever you have out there and let people play with it by forking it. It doesn't even have to "build", e.g. other people could start by making it build reliably. There really are no limits. - All code is immediately applicable for builders, even prototype code. Immediately applicable means that they'll be able to read it, study it, toy with it (possibly interactively), see how it works, make some changes => get inspired - github is not results-driven. No pressure to "ship it", on the contrary - if you want to ship something, the common path is to fork and get it there by yourself, right? - build and exit - the exit part doesn't even apply. Right side of the board: - Source code does export knowledge to be built upon - and its even more knowledge than just old-fashioned media (videos and articles) - it exports hands-on, interactive, reshapeable, remixable, engaging knowledge. - its perhaps not long-term enough, but on the plus side it actively engages a much larger number of people. - it could indeed distract from deeper, foundational work but I think there is enough room for anyone to choose what kind of work they want to do - no need to centralize it all. For example, people could "pull" new foundational work from Victor into their own projects. - its definitely exploratory - massively exploratory as it engages more people actively on many levels and causes an innovation ripple effect. A tiny example: as soon as V8 implemented generators in JavaScript, the node.js community started experimenting with async runners. Lots of async runners were produced and ideas are still studied, analyzed and exchanged between various projects. But before V8 published it, it was all just excitement and discussion about the possibilities with zero hands-on experimentation and a much smaller number of ideas. - it is indeed ongoing - nothing needs to be shipped, no project need necessarily be done. Additionally: - it represents extreme transparency - everything open to the public - which nicely matches the scientific method. Percieved but non-existant downside: - personal recognition is harder - not quite true. Its easy to think that some things may get lost in the mass of people, but usually the contrary happens - the pioneers always get the recognition. [citation needed - this one is based on personal observations] Possible downsides: - academic recognition: no idea how academy (and related publishers) treat open-source in general. It seems like they would be a perfect match for each other as they share a lot of common principles, but so far it hasn't engaged researchers more massively... Its a third category - different from traditional research and different from industry. I believe its worth considering.
fit2rule 13y ago
As a developer I really appreciate his position personally. I think one of the reasons he's so brilliant is that he's a pioneer in pushing interface abstraction back and forth between the science and art worlds. I'm not sure he'd be so competent were he working under the constraints of commercial development. What I yearn for is about 20 more Bret Victors to appear in such a way that they'd all get together in the same room for a few weeks and do some cool shit. Maybe thats where he's headed?
Glench 13y ago
Don't you see? Just by giving these talks he is building a community. Releasing the products makes everyone focus on the specific things he's made and not the things these products represent. The ideas are much more important, and he wants people to push past the things he's made and invent entirely new things.

by spion 13y ago

austenallred 13y ago

One particular tweet from Victor explains his point of view quite poignantly, in what he calls the dichotomy between industry and research: "An 'Industry vs Research' dichotomy that I sketched at a conference. I probably should elaborate on it sometime. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/photo/1" https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho... One can understand why, given the options as viewed by Victor, one would choose "research" if given the choice.

chm 13y ago
I get an error that the page doesn't exist.
- austenallred 13y ago
  The last " is sticking to the link. Delete that and it works. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/photo/1 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/392335781374619648/pho...
spion 13y ago
Going through that list, this is what I think github style open-source prototype publishing would mean for the points made there: Left side of the board: - No need to ship anything. Its possible to just put whatever you have out there and let people play with it by forking it. It doesn't even have to "build", e.g. other people could start by making it build reliably. There really are no limits. - All code is immediately applicable for builders, even prototype code. Immediately applicable means that they'll be able to read it, study it, toy with it (possibly interactively), see how it works, make some changes => get inspired - github is not results-driven. No pressure to "ship it", on the contrary - if you want to ship something, the common path is to fork and get it there by yourself, right? - build and exit - the exit part doesn't even apply. Right side of the board: - Source code does export knowledge to be built upon - and its even more knowledge than just old-fashioned media (videos and articles) - it exports hands-on, interactive, reshapeable, remixable, engaging knowledge. - its perhaps not long-term enough, but on the plus side it actively engages a much larger number of people. - it could indeed distract from deeper, foundational work but I think there is enough room for anyone to choose what kind of work they want to do - no need to centralize it all. For example, people could "pull" new foundational work from Victor into their own projects. - its definitely exploratory - massively exploratory as it engages more people actively on many levels and causes an innovation ripple effect. A tiny example: as soon as V8 implemented generators in JavaScript, the node.js community started experimenting with async runners. Lots of async runners were produced and ideas are still studied, analyzed and exchanged between various projects. But before V8 published it, it was all just excitement and discussion about the possibilities with zero hands-on experimentation and a much smaller number of ideas. - it is indeed ongoing - nothing needs to be shipped, no project need necessarily be done. Additionally: - it represents extreme transparency - everything open to the public - which nicely matches the scientific method. Percieved but non-existant downside: - personal recognition is harder - not quite true. Its easy to think that some things may get lost in the mass of people, but usually the contrary happens - the pioneers always get the recognition. [citation needed - this one is based on personal observations] Possible downsides: - academic recognition: no idea how academy (and related publishers) treat open-source in general. It seems like they would be a perfect match for each other as they share a lot of common principles, but so far it hasn't engaged researchers more massively... Its a third category - different from traditional research and different from industry. I believe its worth considering.

fit2rule 13y ago

As a developer I really appreciate his position personally. I think one of the reasons he's so brilliant is that he's a pioneer in pushing interface abstraction back and forth between the science and art worlds. I'm not sure he'd be so competent were he working under the constraints of commercial development. What I yearn for is about 20 more Bret Victors to appear in such a way that they'd all get together in the same room for a few weeks and do some cool shit. Maybe thats where he's headed?

Glench 13y ago

Don't you see? Just by giving these talks he is building a community. Releasing the products makes everyone focus on the specific things he's made and not the things these products represent. The ideas are much more important, and he wants people to push past the things he's made and invent entirely new things.