Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Le vendredi 11 Fvrier 2005 21:45, Curt a crit: On 2005-02-10, Francis Girard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I've been enthouasistic too fast. While reading the article I grew more and more uncomfortable with sayings like : snip Yes, you may have grown uncomfortable because what you read has, at best, only the most tenuous of relations with what was written. There is no way in God's frigid hell that your sayings (which were never uttered by Alan Kay) can be construed as anything other than a hopefully transient psychotic episode by anyone who read the interview with his head in a place other than where the moon doesn't shine. Please be so kind as to free your own from the breathless confines of your own fundamental delirium. Wow ! Peace. I apologize. Didn't want to upset anyone. Of course it was my own ad lib interpretation of what Alan Kay said. That's what I meant by sayings. But I should had been clearer. Anyway, it only implies myself. I live at a place where it rains most of the time and my head is indeed in a place where the moon doesn't shine, which may give a good explanation of my own fundamental delirium. For another fundamental delirium (which I certainly enjoy), see : Steve Wart about why Smalltalk never caught on: http://hoho.dyndns.org/~holger/smalltalk.html as someone named Petite abeille (a name I also certainly do find full of flavour) suggested me. My deepest apologies, Francis Girard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 18:48:03 +0100, Francis Girard My deepest apologies, Francis Girard Sorry if I helped get you into this, Francis. I have read and seen enough of Kay and his visions to find him as a bug where *my* moon don't shine. When the appropriate opportunity comes, I find it hard not to mention the fact. All for reasons I have gone into on other fourms, but won;t repeat here. His loyaliss are stongly loyal.. FWIW, my issues have nothing to do with Smalltalk. They have to do with Kay as a puiblic personage. He may, for all I know, be a sweetheart, privately. And this most recent interview is one of the more reasonable I have heard from him. Perhaps he is touching down in reality, more often. But at this point isn't it fair to consider that Kay has forked from Smalltalk. I'd probably have more problems with him, not less, if I were a committed Smalltalk guy. Art -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Le dimanche 13 Février 2005 19:05, Arthur a écrit : On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 18:48:03 +0100, Francis Girard My deepest apologies, Francis Girard Sorry if I helped get you into this, Francis. No, no, don't worry. I really expressed my own opinions and feelings. At the same time, I certainly understand that these opinions might had upset some of the readers. I am sorry for this as I don't think this is the right discussion group for such opinions. Therefore it is useless to hurt people with something that is not a positive contribution. That's all. I will try to refrain in the future. I am just not used to talk to so many people at the same time. Regards, Francis Girard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On 2005-02-10, Francis Girard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I've been enthouasistic too fast. While reading the article I grew more and more uncomfortable with sayings like : snip Yes, you may have grown uncomfortable because what you read has, at best, only the most tenuous of relations with what was written. There is no way in God's frigid hell that your sayings (which were never uttered by Alan Kay) can be construed as anything other than a hopefully transient psychotic episode by anyone who read the interview with his head in a place other than where the moon doesn't shine. Please be so kind as to free your own from the breathless confines of your own fundamental delirium. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Peter Hansen wrote: Grant Edwards wrote: In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. I think that a crystallization of style sums things up nicely. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. Then Perl is an agglutination of styles, while Python might be considered a crystallization of features... Bah. My impressions from the interview was there are no good languages anymore. In my time we made great languages, but today they all suck. Perl for example I got the impressions that the interview is as bad for python as for perl and any of the languages of the 90's and 00's. From the interview: You could think of it as putting a low-pass filter on some of the good ideas from the 60s and 70s, as computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to capture people as they were. So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture. So, let's not be so self-important winkus, and see this interview as one who bashes perl and admires python. It aint. Python is pop culture according to Mr Kay. I'll leave the rest to slashdot.. jfj -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
jfj wrote: Bah. My impressions from the interview was there are no good languages anymore. In my time we made great languages, but today they all suck. Perl for example That was kind of what I took from it as well. Don't get me wrong, I've a lot of respect for Kay's contributions...he just doesn't understand that there's *more* to a language than it's adherence to his ideas of 'best'. His arguments are literally academic. Decrying contemporary choices for their pop nature kinda sounds like the ugly kid devaluing the importance of the school dance. It just wasn't fit enough to survive, Alan. Let it go. - alex23 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Le jeudi 10 Février 2005 04:37, Arthur a écrit : On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:23:06 +0100, Francis Girard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I love him. I don't. It's also interesting to see GUIs with windows, mouse (etc.), which apparently find their origin in is mind, probably comes from the desire to introduce computers to children. Alfred Bork, now Professor Emeritus Information and Computer Science University of California, Irvine 92697 had written an article in 1980 called Interactive Learning which began We are at the onset of a major revolution in education, a revolution unparalleled since the invention of the printing press. The computer will be the instrument of this revolution. In 2000 he published: Interactive Learning: Twenty Years Later looking back on his orignal article and its optimistic predictions and admitting I was not a very good prophet What went wrong? Among other things he points (probably using a pointing device) at the pointing device Another is the rise of the mouse as a computer device. People had the peculiar idea that one could deal with the world of learning purely by pointing. The articles can be found here: http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss4/seminal.cfm One does not need to agree or disagree, it seems to me about this or that point on interface, or influence, or anything else. What one does need to do is separate hope from actuality, and approach the entire subject area with some sense of what is at stake, and with some true sense of the complexity of the issues, in such a way that at this stage of the game the only authentic stance is one of humility, Kay fails the humility test, dramatically. IMO. I think I've been enthouasistic too fast. While reading the article I grew more and more uncomfortable with sayings like : - Intel and Motorola don't know how to do micro-processors and did not understand anything in our own architecture - Languages of today are features filled doggy bags - Java failed where I succeeded - I think beautifully like a mathematician while the rest is pop culture - etc. I'm not sure at all he likes Python. Python is too pragmmatic for him. And its definition does not hold in the palm of his hand. I think he's a bit nostalgic. Francis Girard or Art -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On Feb 10, 2005, at 19:43, Francis Girard wrote: I think he's a bit nostalgic. Steve Wart about why Smalltalk never caught on: http://hoho.dyndns.org/~holger/smalltalk.html Cheers -- PA, Onnay Equitursay http://alt.textdrive.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Thank you. Francis Girard Le jeudi 10 Fvrier 2005 02:48, Scott David Daniels a crit: Francis Girard wrote: ... It's also interesting to see GUIs with windows, mouse (etc.), which apparently find their origin in is mind, probably comes from the desire to introduce computers to children. OK, presuming origin in is mind was meant to say origin in his mind, I'd like to stick up for Doug Engelbart (holds the patent on the mouse) here. I interviewed with his group at SRI in the ancient past, when they were working on the Augmentation Research project -- machine augmentation of human intelligence. They, at the time, were working on input pointing devices and hadn't yet settled. The helmet that read brain waves was doing astoundingly well (90% correct on up, down, left, right, don't move), but nowhere near well enough to use for positioning on edits. This work produced the mouse, despite rumors of Xerox Parc or Apple inventing the mouse. Xerox Parc, did, as far as I understand, do the early development on interactive graphic display using a mouse for positioning on a graphics screen. Engelbart's mouse navigated on a standard 80x24 character screen. Augment did real research on what might work, with efforts to measure ease of use and reliability. They did not simply start with a good (or great) guess and charge forward. They produced the mouse, and the earliest linked documents that I know of. http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html --Scott David Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pioneers of WIMPishness (was: A great Alan Kay quote)
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:08:11 GMT, rumours say that [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cameron Laird) might have written: I entirely agree that Engelbart deserves full recognition for his achievements. At the same time, I think we also should note that Ted Nelson was publishing articles about hypertext in '65, and Vannevar Bush lucidly explained his vision for textual linking in '45. With a little provocation, I can push the ideas of mechanical or machine referencing back at least to the Enlightenment, and arguably much farther. Like -- TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best. Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. (from RFC1958) I really should keep that in mind when talking with people, actually... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: Pioneers of WIMPishness (was: A great Alan Kay quote)
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:08:11 GMT, rumours say that [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cameron Laird) might have written: [more snipping] With a little provocation, I can push the ideas of mechanical or machine referencing back at least to the Enlightenment, and arguably much farther. Please ignore my earlier post, since it was mistakenly sent incomplete. about arguably much farther: http://www.ancient-mysteries.com/greece2000/Main/Main2/Main3/Anti-Main/anti-main.html and http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/battery2.html and http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/steamengine2.html Nice page, this: http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/hsclist.htm -- TZOTZIOY, I speak England very best. Be strict when sending and tolerant when receiving. (from RFC1958) I really should keep that in mind when talking with people, actually... -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Le jeudi 10 Février 2005 19:47, PA a écrit : On Feb 10, 2005, at 19:43, Francis Girard wrote: I think he's a bit nostalgic. Steve Wart about why Smalltalk never caught on: http://hoho.dyndns.org/~holger/smalltalk.html Cheers -- PA, Onnay Equitursay http://alt.textdrive.com/ ! Francis Girard -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
A great Alan Kay quote
In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. I think that a crystallization of style sums things up nicely. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Look!! Karl Malden! at visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Surely Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term. is better lol ;) On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 11:00:32 -0800 (PST), Grant Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. I think that a crystallization of style sums things up nicely. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Look!! Karl Malden! at visi.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Today he is Senior Fellow at Hewlett-Packard Labs and president of Viewpoints Research Institute, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to change how children are educated by creating a sample curriculum with supporting media for teaching math and science. This curriculum will use Squeak as its media, and will be highly interactive and constructive. Kays deep interests in children and education have been the catalysts for many of his ideas over the years. I love him. It's also interesting to see GUIs with windows, mouse (etc.), which apparently find their origin in is mind, probably comes from the desire to introduce computers to children. Francis Girard Le mercredi 9 Fvrier 2005 20:29, Grant Edwards a crit: On 2005-02-09, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Surely Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term. is better lol ;) That was the other one I really liked, and Perl was the first language I thought of when I saw the phrase agglutination of features. C++ was the second one. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! -- In 1962, you could at buy a pair of SHARKSKIN visi.comSLACKS, with a Continental Belt, for $10.99!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Grant Edwards wrote: In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. I think that a crystallization of style sums things up nicely. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. Then Perl is an agglutination of styles, while Python might be considered a crystallization of features... -Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On 2005-02-09, Peter Hansen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style. Languages such as APL, Lisp, and Smalltalk are what you might call style languages, where there's a real center and imputed style to how you're supposed to do everything. Then Perl is an agglutination of styles, while Python might be considered a crystallization of features... Exactly. -- Grant Edwards grante Yow! NOW, I'm supposed at to SCRAMBLE two, and HOLD visi.comth' MAYO!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
[Peter Hansen] Then Perl is an agglutination of styles, while Python might be considered a crystallization of features... Grosso modo, yes. Yet, we should recognise that Python agglutinated a few crystals in the recent years. :-) It gave up some of its purity for practical reasons. We got rather far from the There is only one way to do it! that once was Python motto. -- François Pinard http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
François Pinard wrote: [Peter Hansen] Then Perl is an agglutination of styles, while Python might be considered a crystallization of features... Grosso modo, yes. Yet, we should recognise that Python agglutinated a few crystals in the recent years. :-) It gave up some of its purity for practical reasons. We got rather far from the There is only one way to do it! that once was Python motto. I would call a pure language one that had a crystallized style. Python, on the other hand, is just plain practical. Thus my half-humorous attempt at defining it in terms of the features (with its wide-ranging library and extension modules) rather than in termso of its style (which as you know can range from procedural to functional, stopping briefly at object oriented and newbie along the way ;-) ). -Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Grant Edwards wrote: In an interview at http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Contentpa=showpagepid=273 Alan Kay said something I really liked, and I think it applies equally well to Python as well as the languages mentioned: I characterized one way of looking at languages in this way: a lot of them are either the agglutination of features or they're a crystallization of style I'd say Python is somewhere in the middle, though moving slowly towards 'agglutination' in the last couple years. The rest of the interview is pretty interesting as well. Excellent link, thanks. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On Wed, 09 Feb 2005 15:57:10 -0800, has wrote: I'd say Python is somewhere in the middle, though moving slowly towards 'agglutination' in the last couple years. But it feels really badly about that and promises to kick the habit somewhere around the year 3000. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
Francis Girard wrote: ... It's also interesting to see GUIs with windows, mouse (etc.), which apparently find their origin in is mind, probably comes from the desire to introduce computers to children. OK, presuming origin in is mind was meant to say origin in his mind, I'd like to stick up for Doug Engelbart (holds the patent on the mouse) here. I interviewed with his group at SRI in the ancient past, when they were working on the Augmentation Research project -- machine augmentation of human intelligence. They, at the time, were working on input pointing devices and hadn't yet settled. The helmet that read brain waves was doing astoundingly well (90% correct on up, down, left, right, don't move), but nowhere near well enough to use for positioning on edits. This work produced the mouse, despite rumors of Xerox Parc or Apple inventing the mouse. Xerox Parc, did, as far as I understand, do the early development on interactive graphic display using a mouse for positioning on a graphics screen. Engelbart's mouse navigated on a standard 80x24 character screen. Augment did real research on what might work, with efforts to measure ease of use and reliability. They did not simply start with a good (or great) guess and charge forward. They produced the mouse, and the earliest linked documents that I know of. http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html --Scott David Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Pioneers of WIMPishness (was: A great Alan Kay quote)
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Scott David Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . [thoroughly appropriate focus on Engelbart and his Augment colleagues] . . (or great) guess and charge forward. They produced the mouse, and the earliest linked documents that I know of. http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html . . . I entirely agree that Engelbart deserves full recognition for his achievements. At the same time, I think we also should note that Ted Nelson was publishing articles about hypertext in '65, and Vannevar Bush lucidly explained his vision for textual linking in '45. With a little provocation, I can push the ideas of mechanical or machine referencing back at least to the Enlightenment, and arguably much farther. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: A great Alan Kay quote
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 21:23:06 +0100, Francis Girard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I love him. I don't. It's also interesting to see GUIs with windows, mouse (etc.), which apparently find their origin in is mind, probably comes from the desire to introduce computers to children. Alfred Bork, now Professor Emeritus Information and Computer Science University of California, Irvine 92697 had written an article in 1980 called Interactive Learning which began We are at the onset of a major revolution in education, a revolution unparalleled since the invention of the printing press. The computer will be the instrument of this revolution. In 2000 he published: Interactive Learning: Twenty Years Later looking back on his orignal article and its optimistic predictions and admitting I was not a very good prophet What went wrong? Among other things he points (probably using a pointing device) at the pointing device Another is the rise of the mouse as a computer device. People had the peculiar idea that one could deal with the world of learning purely by pointing. The articles can be found here: http://www.citejournal.org/vol2/iss4/seminal.cfm One does not need to agree or disagree, it seems to me about this or that point on interface, or influence, or anything else. What one does need to do is separate hope from actuality, and approach the entire subject area with some sense of what is at stake, and with some true sense of the complexity of the issues, in such a way that at this stage of the game the only authentic stance is one of humility, Kay fails the humility test, dramatically. IMO. Art -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
