Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

Hi Alan,

One of the concepts I've heard you talk about before in interviews and the like is simulation. I think simulation is huge and we should be seeing products that cater towards it, but largely aren't.

http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=5

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/08/links-1214-come-ye-to-b...

Do you still think simulation is an important promise of the computer revolution, and are there any products you know of or ideas you have that are/would be a step in the right direction?

Yes, and I don't really. An interesting one that has been around for a few years -- that can be used by the general public, children, etc. -- is NetLogo (a takeoff from StarLogo). There is also a StarLogo Nova that is worth looking at.

But these are not really general simulation languages of the kind we need in 2016 and beyond ...

I need to read what you've said regarding simulations and pseudotime, but I've been wondering if this is along the same lines has as an HDL like VHDL/Verilog/SystemVerilog.

I do chip implementations in those languages, which of course involves simulation and a time concept. I get the idea that is not the sort of simulation you mean, but I'm not sure. The other thought I had was simulation more in the SPICE sense that iterate toward a solution in steps.

Any chance you could briefly clarify, and/or toss out a resource that points in the right direction?

What would a simulation of an epidemic look like? Or a simulation of ants finding food via pheromone trails. Or simulation of dye diffusing in water? Or a simulation of an object being dropped?

Etc

Cellular automata comes to mind. I'll think on it.

This AMA has really been neat, thanks so much for doing it.