The best class I took at the University of Chicago was one focused at dissecting a number of the scientific papers that were most "worshipped" - they were written by the best and the brightest and were highly referenced in the field. When we read them critically, we found that often (always in the set of papers we looked at) the claims of these papers simply could not be substantiated by the content. Sometimes, it was just not supportable - sometimes even the opposite result from the claim was demonstrated. Critical reading and thinking is hugely important. I have no problem with this. That is what real science is all about. As long as these kids also have the ability and opportunity to question the bullshit that is in these textbooks, then everything will be just fine.
Perhaps you should take a look at the design. You clearly didn't, because you got it totally wrong. Read the manual. There is a complete description of the TeaTime architecture that Croquet uses and it does not match your description.
I agree. The work being done by Alan and his team is moving forward regardless of what happens, but I am sure the open source guys at HP/CRL are going to suffer, and with it many extremely important projects that most of us are dependent upon. Of course, HP is dependent upon this work as well. They just don't know it yet...
I believe the reason that Smalltalk, and Lisp for that matter, are perceived to be hard to program is (oddly enough) because its syntax is so incredibly regular. There are virtually no keywords, and no irregular if/then structures. Everything is done via sending messages to objects with an extremely regular syntax. This makes the code extremely regular, which unfortunately is exactly the opposite of what humans are good at - which is detecting patterns. By removing all of the major road signs that other languages have (like if/then, forced indents, or whatever...) then the reader is forced to actually parse the code to get a sense of what is going on. This isn't that hard for someone with a bit of experience, but for newbies, or someone used to languages full of irregular structure (read patterns), then it looks a bit daunting. So Smalltalk (and Lisp) are actually extremely easy to learn - one pattern fits all - but they are relatively difficult to read.
We used Bittorrent to distribute the Croquet developer's release with great success. Also, the system itself is a p2p collaboration architecture. See .
If that is a list of the top 40 to choose from - and many of these are not programmers at all, (perhaps they dabble in Java a bit), then I think our field has hit on hard times indeed. Knuth? Bell? Kay? SUTHERLAND?????
I am not that old, but even I have a clue about the history of programming.
And there is the Smalltalk ~= operator which has probably been around since...1972.
From Squeak (circa 1994)
Object>>#~= anObject
"Answer whether the receiver and the argument do not represent the same object."
^self = anObject == false
Based upon a cursory look at the patent, I believe there is significant prior art dating back to the 60's when Ivan Sutherland was doing his work with HMDs and started Evans and Sutherland for flight simulation - and if that isn't a user at the center of a sphere, viewing out a virtual window, I don't know what is. Also the Atari Star Wars and Battlezone games (early 80s) and even my own game The Colony (1986-87) mentioned by The Register here: . Frankly, I am surprised that the USPTO granted this patent then. They were still somewhat reasonable and actually required proof of uniqueness, unlike today. If I were EA at al, I would not cave to this.
HP is currently supporting Croquet both directly (hiring Alan, David Reed, and Andreas Raab) and indirectly by supporting Alan Kay's non-profit - Viewpoints Research Institute.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes - you can write to Dave at the Late Show here: cbsmailbag at aol dot com. Really - I got that address from the Late Show site.
The best class I took at the University of Chicago was one focused at dissecting a number of the scientific papers that were most "worshipped" - they were written by the best and the brightest and were highly referenced in the field. When we read them critically, we found that often (always in the set of papers we looked at) the claims of these papers simply could not be substantiated by the content. Sometimes, it was just not supportable - sometimes even the opposite result from the claim was demonstrated. Critical reading and thinking is hugely important. I have no problem with this. That is what real science is all about. As long as these kids also have the ability and opportunity to question the bullshit that is in these textbooks, then everything will be just fine.
Portal (Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.)
Check out Qwaq Forums - an enterprise class collaboration application built on top of Croquet.
Perhaps you should take a look at the design. You clearly didn't, because you got it totally wrong. Read the manual. There is a complete description of the TeaTime architecture that Croquet uses and it does not match your description.
John and Nicholas Negroponte are brothers. Really.
Actually, he invented overlapping windows. Alan says that Engelbart invented the actual idea of windows, though they were tiled (like Windoze 1.0).
I agree. The work being done by Alan and his team is moving forward regardless of what happens, but I am sure the open source guys at HP/CRL are going to suffer, and with it many extremely important projects that most of us are dependent upon. Of course, HP is dependent upon this work as well. They just don't know it yet...
I believe the reason that Smalltalk, and Lisp for that matter, are perceived to be hard to program is (oddly enough) because its syntax is so incredibly regular. There are virtually no keywords, and no irregular if/then structures. Everything is done via sending messages to objects with an extremely regular syntax. This makes the code extremely regular, which unfortunately is exactly the opposite of what humans are good at - which is detecting patterns. By removing all of the major road signs that other languages have (like if/then, forced indents, or whatever...) then the reader is forced to actually parse the code to get a sense of what is going on. This isn't that hard for someone with a bit of experience, but for newbies, or someone used to languages full of irregular structure (read patterns), then it looks a bit daunting. So Smalltalk (and Lisp) are actually extremely easy to learn - one pattern fits all - but they are relatively difficult to read.
And of course their "culture" consists of the Tom Clancy game franchise with a little Prince of Persia on the side.
Coincidently, I just switched over to Thunderbird today. I would have paid more if the link allowed me to. I'll bet others would too.
We used Bittorrent to distribute the Croquet developer's release with great success. Also, the system itself is a p2p collaboration architecture. See .
If that is a list of the top 40 to choose from - and many of these are not programmers at all, (perhaps they dabble in Java a bit), then I think our field has hit on hard times indeed. Knuth? Bell? Kay? SUTHERLAND????? I am not that old, but even I have a clue about the history of programming.
And there is the Smalltalk ~= operator which has probably been around since...1972. From Squeak (circa 1994) Object>>#~= anObject "Answer whether the receiver and the argument do not represent the same object." ^self = anObject == false
Based upon a cursory look at the patent, I believe there is significant prior art dating back to the 60's when Ivan Sutherland was doing his work with HMDs and started Evans and Sutherland for flight simulation - and if that isn't a user at the center of a sphere, viewing out a virtual window, I don't know what is. Also the Atari Star Wars and Battlezone games (early 80s) and even my own game The Colony (1986-87) mentioned by The Register here: . Frankly, I am surprised that the USPTO granted this patent then. They were still somewhat reasonable and actually required proof of uniqueness, unlike today. If I were EA at al, I would not cave to this.
HP is currently supporting Croquet both directly (hiring Alan, David Reed, and Andreas Raab) and indirectly by supporting Alan Kay's non-profit - Viewpoints Research Institute.