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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

1401 points alankay | 4 comments | 20 Jun 16 18:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

This request originated via recent discussions on HN, and the forming of HARC! at YC Research. I'll be around for most of the day today (though the early evening).
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discreteevent ◴[20 Jun 16 19:26 UTC] No.11940642[source]▶
Hi Alan,

A lot of the VPRI work involved inventing new languages (DSLs). The results were extremely impressive but there were some extremely impressive people inventing the languages. Do you think this is a practical approach for everyday programmers? You have also recommended before that there should be clear separation between meta model and model. Should there be something similar to discipline a codebase where people are inventing their own languages? Or should just e.g. OS writers invent the languages and everyone else use a lingua franca?

replies(1): >>11941154 #
alankay ◴[20 Jun 16 20:15 UTC] No.11941154[source]▶
Tricky question. One answer would be to ask whether there is an intrinsic difference between "computer science" and (say) physics? Or are the differences just that computing is where science was in the Middle Ages?
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1. discreteevent ◴[20 Jun 16 22:34 UTC] No.11942139[source]▶
Thanks. I've been thinking about your questions. I might be misreading you but I think that the answer is probably yes to both. So we should try to get out of the middle ages by inventing new theories and criticising and testing them like physics. But maybe just the physicists should do that. In the meantime the engineers should focus on being able to communicate clearly with the best tools that are currently available.(part of which is restricting their desire to invent)
replies(1): >>11945187 #
2. alankay1 ◴[21 Jun 16 12:38 UTC] No.11945187[source]▶
Engineering is wonderful -- but think of what happened after real science got invented!

Today's "computer science" is much more like "library science" than it should be on the one hand, and too much coincident with engineering on the other (and usually not great engineering at that).

It's way past time for our not-quite-a-field to grow up more in important ways.

replies(1): >>11948863 #
3. discreteevent ◴[21 Jun 16 19:46 UTC] No.11948863[source]▶
Agreed. It's really motivating to have someone who has shown a few times what can be done continuing to push for better. It's also helpful for you call a spade a spade when you talk of reinventing the flat tire. If more people would recognise both of these then maybe we could have a better future and more stable engineering present (rather than framework/language of the week!)
replies(1): >>11948942 #
4. alankay1 ◴[21 Jun 16 19:57 UTC] No.11948942{3}[source]▶
It would be very good if we starting to do real engineering and real science wrt software and most design ...