Slashdot Mirror
Alan Kay Decries the State of Computing
gnaremooz writes "Computer pioneer Alan Kay (DARPA in the '60s, PARC in the '70s, now HP Labs) declares 'The sad truth is that 20 years or so of commercialization have almost completely missed the point of what personal computing is about.' He believes that PCs should be tools for creativity and learning, and they are falling short."
In techie terms, he is working on an infinitely scalable system for "real-time immersive collaboration done entirely as peer-to-peer machines."
He's probably talking about Croquet which is a 3d collaborative environment developed on top of Squeak. Impressive stuff.
His specific complaints are understandable considering his long (and illustrious) career in computer science, but the underlying thesis is simply that we (including Alan Kay) haven't even begun to appreciate what computers can do. Kay yearns for a paradigm evolution, and considers our anchored situatedness to be detrimental.
Please don't color the word "simulate" too much when reading Kay's words. To simulate is to recreate (approximate) one system in another system. Mathematics is a mode of simulation. The sole purpose of computers is simulation.
RTFA, I had the impression of a man that is trapped in the wrong company.
Since active cynic Carly took over, there is no HP any more.
It's NewAgeP: No more research needed - except for how to supress printer ink refilling. Product creation sold to Intel (when she notices the chipset guys are doing well, she'd sell those poor souls to Intel too).
Corporate Culture vaporized. Business-is-adding-a-sticker attitude.
What is this guy sitting for on his chair at HP?
chess
For an enthusiastic and engrossing view of what Kay thinks computers *should* be (and I'm 100% with him!) should check it out.
I agree! I notice that nearly every post I've read glibly dismisses Kay's assertions (after mere seconds of processing). It may feel empowering to contradict so dully a person who's thoughts are highly regarded, but that doesn't really do anything to elevate pundits' opinions--just the opposite.
I'm not talking about Smalltalk. I'm talking about Squeak. RTA.
I've no acronym for this, but Know What You're Talking About (KWYTA?). Squeak *is* Smalltalk. It's not the only Smalltalk dialect there is, but it the fastest growing Smalltalk, the Smalltalk with the biggest online community around it.
If you run a LOGO implementation, written in C, on top of your Linux/X11 box, you don't say that "C is nothing but LOGO," or "Man, leenux suxors, all you can do is play with LOGO" do you? You can use Squeak in a number of ways. You can use the eToys scripting system, which is what I assume you are thinking of as modernized LOGO. Or, if for some reason you feel more "adult" doing so, you can write the GUI in all of your apps in a purely programmatic way. Or, you could do what most Squeakers do- just get the job done in the way that makes sense.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Squeak isn't all that hard to figure out. But if you're used to having a nicely written book, you can buy one- a couple exist for Squeak specifically. But Squeak's online documentation is lacking, there's no doubt about that- especially in the area of newbie reorientation. Making apps in Squeak is different than making apps in Java, C++ or even Lisp. The environment's different for one.
:P
The basic idea for creating a program in Squeak is to open up the Class Browser. Make a new class. Code away. Depending on what your program does, you may need more than one class.
Or, you can make apps without doing it the old fashioned way. In Squeak, you can draw up your GUI, composing it with widgets out of the Morphic Toolbox, and then adding scripts. When this button is clicked, do this or that. Etc. There are some good tutorials for this newer way of making programs.
It is an (not *the*- anything can be improved) ideal environment for kids- when you've got people teaching them. People used to coding in the same form for a long time often have a hard time learning Squeak. But then again, a lot of old assembly and C hackers have a hard time doing C++ or Java without spending a lot of time thinking about how to design OO systems instead of procedural ones. But old dogs can learn new tricks.
I learned Smalltalk and Squeak on my own, teaching it to myself. I had no problem doing it. Didn't have a text book- or any book, for that matter. While there were even fewer online docs back in those days, that's where I started, but then moving to mostly exploring the system. In Smalltalk, you have the Class Browser, which allows one to browse the source code to anything in the system. I learned by example and by doing. So far, that's how I've learned every language I know, and doing it by just reading books doesn't work for me. When I wanted to know how to make a GUI, I looked at the source of the simplest built-in apps in Squeak, learning how a GUI was constructed. Then making something simple of my own, a simple Address Book. After that point, it's just a matter of checking the reference- that is, looking at the class hierarchy and for the methods that are provided.
I think some personality types don't take well to this kind of exploratory programming, prefering to learn in a more passive way. That's fine- to each her own. Squeak tends to draw folks that do like that style of learning and doing. When it's learned, it is really handy. "Learning" Java for me didn't take that long, and it's mostly a matter of having the on-line class reference handy for me to write a program. In the best case, Squeak would provide more documentation for those who learned to program the old fashioned way, but in any OSS community, no one wants to be the one to write such docs.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
When did Stephen King die?
/. where people post that Stephen King died. I can't believe a non-ac posted the troll. I admire that. Googling stephen king died slashdot, I got this page. which is pretty funny.
This is a long-running joke/troll here on
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Unlike most of those, he's implemented those ideas, and has been spent implementing those- in real, live, usable code- for the last 30-some years
Kay has done more than a lot of visionaries implementing his ideas. But have you actually tried to use Squeak or any of his other projects? They make neat demos. They demonstrate ideas very nicely. But I haven't found the "real, live, usable".
Sadly, I find Squeak not even to be very useful for purposes where it should actually excel: user interface research and prototyping. While it has some nifty features, many parts of the system are quite messy, integration with standard desktop functionality is sadly lacking, and a lot of standard GUI functionality is either not there at all, or it is poorly documented and flaky.
Kay makes good points, and he shows good demos. But he is still stuck in the "visionary" stage, and we really need more work to bring visions to real people. If he cared more about that, he'd implement his ideas closer to where people are working. Python/Gnome or C#/Windows or OSX/Quartz are powerful and easy enough to use that he could do everything in them. I'm wondering whether some visionaries aren't just afraid of putting their ideas into practice: too much work, and users might not actually like it.
If there is a statement more clueless than this, you have just attained it. Squeak has always been, and always will be the open-source Smalltalk system. All other smalltalk systems have been proprietary and closed source. Anyone remember ParcPlace systems? They're probably still the most popular closed-source smalltalk system out there on the market. I didn't read the article, but I can tell you that Smalltalk and Squeak are the exact same thing though. Squeak is the modern implementation of the last revision of smalltalk (Smalltalk-80). If you look at their mailing lists, they still refer to the "purple" book a lot, the Smalltalk-80 specification written by Adele Goldberg.
Too dedicated to replacing earlier tools like ink and paper?
Like having a "desktop" with "manila folders" where home users typically store "documents", even though these days half those 'documents' are music or video?
Like showing a piece of paper being moved frrom manila folder to manila folder for file transfer dialogs?
Like having a "recycle bin" that looks like a trash can and presumably catches those itty bitty pieces of paper that lurk inside the machine?
Who is John Cabal?
That's nice. I'm sure it feels good for the handicapped kid to "belong". But why stop there?! Don't you think playing an FPS falls quite short of creating art or learning new things? That's all Kay is saying. Computers could be the tool the handicapped kid needs to really -contribute- to society, not to just -belong-.
simulation, and
authorship.
In other words, he wants computers used for computational purposes (where authorship == "computation of ideas") rather than simply presentational purposes.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.