alankay1

29 ms·

271.
by alankay1 10y ago
I should clarify this. I didn't exactly mean as a language to program in, but as (a) a "building material" and (b) especially as an "artifact to think with". Once you grok it, most issues in programming languages (i
272.
by alankay1 10y ago
It doesn't suck "getting old" -- and you only find out about stamina by trying to do things ... (We are fortunate that most of what is "new" is more like "particular 'news'" rather than actually
273.
by alankay1 10y ago
Let me both acknowledge your questions, and also acknowledge that this forum (the media authoring tools) are not in scale with the needed answers ...
274.
by alankay1 10y ago
I think that the "training" of "System 1" is a key factor in allowing "System 2" to be powerful. This is beyond the scope of this AMA (or at least beyond my scope to try to put together a decent comment on this
275.
by alankay1 10y ago
This is a tough one to try to produce "through the keyhole" of this very non-WYSIWYG poorly thought through artifact of the WWW people not understanding what either the Internet or computer media are all about. Let me just say tha
276.
by alankay1 10y ago
I meant, we could "use three good ones", not that I knew of three ...
277.
by alankay1 10y ago
I don't think Aspects is nearly as good an idea as MOP was. But the "hyperness" of it is why the language and the development system have to be much better. E.g. Dan Ingalls put a lot of work into the Smalltalks to allow them
278.
by alankay1 10y ago
My friend Neil Postman (our best media critic for many years) advocated teaching children to be "Guerilla Warriors" in the war of thousands of entities trying to seize their brains for food. Most children -- and most parents, most
279.
by alankay1 10y ago
Dreaming can work without images. What are your sleeping dreams like?
280.
by alankay1 10y ago
There's a lot online and the Viewpoints "writings" page
281.
by alankay1 10y ago
You are thinking of something else ...
282.
by alankay1 10y ago
What kinds of learning do you want your prospective programmers to go through? It's what you know fluently that determines cognitive load. In music you are asking for an answer in a range from kazoos to violins. The main thing a langua
283.
by alankay1 10y ago
I liked Self. "Good OOP" is still waiting for a much better notion to replace the idea of a "Class"
284.
by alankay1 10y ago
Bob Barton once called systems programmers "High priests of a low cult" and pointed out that "computing should be in the School of Religion" (ca 1966). Thinking is difficult in many ways, and we humans are not really wel
285.
by alankay1 10y ago
Candles, wine and bread aren't technologies? Hard to take this seriously. (And I like to play music, and both music and musical instruments are technology, etc.) A better issue is not getting sucked into "legal drugs" that ha
286.
by alankay1 10y ago
I keep ideas on the back burners for a long time. (The nature of the ideas will determine whether this heuristic works well.)
287.
by alankay1 10y ago
Yes, this idea was originally Nicholas Negroponte's in the 70s. The Parc version was called "Ubiquitous Computing" and was led by Mark Wieser in the 80s ...
288.
by alankay1 10y ago
Tricky question. One answer would be to ask whether there is an intrinsic difference between "computer science" and (say) physics? Or are the differences just that computing is where science was in the Middle Ages?
289.
by alankay1 10y ago
"Meta is dangerous" so a safe meta-language within a language will have "fences" to protect. (Note that "assignment" to a variable is "meta" in a functional language (and you might want to use a &quot
290.
by alankay1 10y ago
What does the world actually need?
291.
by alankay1 10y ago
There are more than 23,000,000 books in the Library of Congress, and a good reader might be able to read 23,000 books in a lifetime (I know just a few people who have read more). So we are contemplating a lifetime of reading in which we mig
292.
by alankay1 10y ago
Yikes!
293.
by alankay1 10y ago
I don't have great advice (I found getting halfway decent funding since 1980 to be quite a chore). I was incredibly lucky to wind up quite accidentally at the U of Utah ARPA project 50 year ago this year. Part of the deal is being real
294.
by alankay1 10y ago
Take a look at the HN discussion on this -- perhaps someone will supply a URL?
295.
by alankay1 10y ago
I certainly don't think of music along these lines. Or even theater. I like developed arts of all kinds, and these require learning on the part of the beholder, not just bones tossed at puppies.
296.
by alankay1 10y ago
Pay a lot of attention to realizing you (and all of us) are in "boxes". This means what we think of as "reality" are just our beliefs" and that "the present" is just a particular construction. The future n
297.
by alankay1 10y ago
If there are lots of resources more or less available, then a lot of "hunting and gathering" types can do things with them, and some other types can see about what it takes to make resources rather than just consume them. The form
298.
by alankay1 10y ago
I would work on the early grades for all students, especially gifted ones. The epistemological stance you wind up with gets set fairly early -- not in stone but also hard to work with -- and the early grades are where we should be putting o
299.
by alankay1 10y ago
Larger than life character, including literally! A rather kind big bear of a guy, with lots of ideas (and maybe a bit too much baggage from the past ...) Worth reading all "the Macy people", including Gordon Pask, Heinz von Forest
300.
by alankay1 10y ago
Too weak a model of meaning on all counts. Not a new idea, and still they did it again. (This is not an easy problem, and machine learning won't do the job either.)

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