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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

1401 points alankay | 1 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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dflock ◴[21 Jun 16 17:02 UTC] No.11947257[source]▶
Hi Alan,

You've said here a few times here that maybe "data" (in quotes), is a bad idea. Clearly data itself isn't a bad idea, it's just data. What do you mean by the quotes? That the way we think about data in programming is bad? In what context?

I've been thinking & reading about Data Flow programming & languages - datalog, lucid, deadalus/bloom etc... in the context of big data & distributed systems and the work that Chris Granger has been doing on Eve, the BOOM lab at Berkeley, etc... - and that seems like a lot of really good ideas.

What's your opinion on data flow/temporal logic - and how does that square with "maybe data is a bad idea"?

Thanks!

Dunc

replies(1): >>11953728 #
1. alankay1 ◴[22 Jun 16 13:32 UTC] No.11953728[source]▶
Just to say one more time here: the central idea is "meaning", and "data" has no meaning without "process" (you can't even distinguish a fly spec from an intentional mark without a process.

One of many perspectives here is to think of "anything" as a "message" and then ask what does it take to "receive the message"?

People are used to doing (a rather flawed version of) this without being self-aware, so they tend to focus on the ostensive "message" rather than the processes needed to "find the actual message and 'understand' it".

Both Shannon and McLuhan in very different both tremendously useful ways were able to home in on what is really important here.

Most humans are quite naive about this -- but it is endlessly surprising to me -- and depressing -- to see computer people exhibit similar naivete.

For example, the extent to which most code today relies on "outside of code" programmer views (and hopes) is astounding and distressing.