Alan Kay - Normal Considered Harmful

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Strong rec bluetomcat · 2017-02 · on “Ask HN: What are some 'must watch' talks?”

"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong: [LINK] "Normal Considered Harmful" by Alan Kay: [this video]

Strong rec morphle · 2022-09 · on “How Transistors Work [video]”

Richard Feynman is the best teacher we know (explaining electricity): [LINK] He also explains seeing, heat, electro magnetism, elasticity and mirrors among other things. His academic lectures are just as good but too long and hard for laymen to follow. - Every time I switch on an electrical device I hear Feynman say 'Zzzzinggg' and I see the copper bars jiggling across town. - Every time I see a cup of hot liquid I hear Feynman say "jiggling atoms" - Watch his hands and fingers telling the more accurate science story, simulating the electrons and atoms. - I would say that this the most important video to see for any human being on the planet. De second most important thing would be half of A

Recommends cturner · 2012-06 · on “Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012”

You might find this entertaining - I'm watching a speech by Alan Kay at the moment where he says that computing is more pop-culture than science: [this video]

Recommends agentultra · 2012-09 · on “Light Table - Embracing Abstraction”

I think Mr. Granger should refrain from using inaccurate remarks about the history of programming. Light Table is neat but it is not the first attempt at an interactive development environment. His ideas were quite common 30+ years ago (20 years ago would have been right about the time when this style of programming started falling out of vogue). Alan Kay does a far better job than I can in explaining some of this history: [this video] Update I wasn't being terribly fair. Granger might simply not have been aware. In that case I hope he sees my comment and watches the above video. :)

Recommends konstruktor · 2013-10 · on “Toyota's firmware: Bad design and its consequences”

Very well said. The focus on convenience and cool features over safety makes me really sad, and want to force automotive engineers to watch some Alan Kay talks. He loves to talk how people who don't know the history and basics of their craft will arrive at inferior solutions, for example in this one: [this video]

Recommends MichaelAO · 2018-07 · on “Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?”

Alan Kay's 'Normal Considered Harmful' is a good place to start (more about computing in general): [this video]

Recommends skadamat · 2018-10 · on “Dynamicland: The Next Big Thing Is a Room”

It's funny you say that. This is something Alan Kay talks about at length. For example, watch the first 20 mins of this talk - [this video] Essentially, he asserts that computing (or computer science even) isn't a real field (like biology or physics). Most people can't name the early computing pioneers whose work they build on (not true in Physics or Biology, we celebrate the pioneers) nor are they familiar with the work that was done in the Xerox PARC days. It's gotten so bad that a lot of computer science research just assumes that what we have now is what's going to remain forever. In the 70's, all kinds of interesting ideas and experiments were tried. Hardware implemented VM's, direct manipul

Recommends j-pb · 2021-11 · on “What memory model should Rust use?”

Definitely! Although I'm not sure if Morphic[1] is the way forward for UX on the web, despite it only being 10kloc. XD [Anybody stumbling upon this comment, and wondering what Alan Kay is/was up to, this might be a good philosophical starter: [this video] ] 1. [LINK]