Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

They need a much better idea of time (such as approaches to McCarthy's fluents).

And then there is the issue that we need to make "systems" ...

I like what a function is, and this idea should be used, but I think it is better used rather differently ...

If you feel like elaborating on this comment, I'd be most curious to read more detail.

You may have come across it already but you might be interested in "Time Reborn" by Lee Smolin. His opinion is that mathematics is a fine tool but it has lead physics to the "block universe" perspective. A reversible universe that is driven by pure immutable laws. He claims that time and spontaneous change are important.

It crossed over with some of my experience of programming. Recently he wrote "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time" with Roberto Unger, but I haven't read that yet.

> They need a much better idea of time (such as approaches to McCarthy's fluents).

I am not sure what the time problem is for functional programming, but I reckon the Elm language/framework solves problems with time in a very elegant way with it's flavour of FRP and Signals.

In Elm, you can play back your UI interactions in a debugger as they happened and watch the variables as they would have been!

Worth looking at Bob Balzer's EXDAMS system at Rand in the late 60s early 70s.

Google search gives a lot of gibberish on those terms. Here's the paper for anyone trying to follow-up on that comment:

https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1969/5073/00...

Are you familiar with Functional Reactive Programming (FRP)?

Sure ...