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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: 0.001s | 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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olantonan ◴[20 Jun 16 21:39 UTC] No.11941789[source]▶
Does it suck getting old for you? Do you have stamina to make new stuff?

I'm old, very hard to stay on top of all the changes.

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alankay1 ◴[20 Jun 16 21:44 UTC] No.11941827[source]▶
It doesn't suck "getting old" -- and you only find out about stamina by trying to do things ...

(We are fortunate that most of what is "new" is more like "particular 'news'" rather than actually "new". From the standpoint of actual categorical change, things have been very slow the last 30 years or so.)

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1. olantonan ◴[21 Jun 16 12:06 UTC] No.11945060[source]▶
About categorical change, I agree... seems like everybody is just busy optimizing stuff invented in the 70s.
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2. alankay1 ◴[21 Jun 16 12:26 UTC] No.11945143[source]▶
Or less -- I think UIs have really gone downhill.

But, it's also worth looking at places where there's been enough change of one kind or another to constitute "qualitative". This has certainly happened in many areas of engineering and in science. How about in computering?

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3. phantarch ◴[21 Jun 16 13:33 UTC] No.11945441[source]▶
Can you explain more about what in UIs you think has gone downhill? I've seen you refer to this idea in quite a few of your comments and it would be great to get insight on what aspects you think need improving/exterminating/rethinking.
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4. alankay1 ◴[21 Jun 16 15:19 UTC] No.11946283{3}[source]▶
I should get you to articulate this yourself

But let's see -- how about UIs giving up on UNDO, not allowing or not showing multiple tasks, not having good ways to teach how to us the UI or the apps, ...

And a zillion more ...

Yikes!