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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

1401 points alankay | 5 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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defvar ◴[20 Jun 16 18:25 UTC] No.11940053[source]▶
Hi Alan, do you still do coding (any kind of, for any purpose) these days? If you do, what's your comfortable setup (say, language, editor, tools and etc)?
replies(2): >>11940960 #>>11941761 #
DeepAndDark ◴[20 Jun 16 19:59 UTC] No.11940960[source]▶
I would also like to know if he uses emacs or vim, or whatever. And if he thinks the editor is relevant.
replies(1): >>11941011 #
alankay1 ◴[20 Jun 16 20:03 UTC] No.11941011[source]▶
Yikes!
replies(3): >>11941162 #>>11941773 #>>11949998 #
syngrog66 ◴[20 Jun 16 21:36 UTC] No.11941773[source]▶
possible takeaway: even Alan Kay knows not to wade into the religious war that is vi-or-emacs ;-)
replies(1): >>11958781 #
mmiller ◴[23 Jun 16 04:04 UTC] No.11958781[source]▶
I think one thing that scared him away was the word "relevant"... VIM might have as well (very primitive). Emacs tries to do some things that are worth doing, but it brings the user into "textland," not "systemland."
replies(1): >>11959325 #
1. ontouchstart ◴[23 Jun 16 07:01 UTC] No.11959325[source]▶
Are we in a "textland" or a "systemland" when we have these symbolic conversations on HN across space and time?
replies(1): >>11964199 #
2. mmiller ◴[23 Jun 16 20:47 UTC] No.11964199[source]▶
More "textland" than anything else, though that has to do with the medium we're using to communicate "across space and time." What Alan has advocated is that the medium we're using in this particular instance should be a version of "systemland."
replies(1): >>11964396 #
3. ontouchstart ◴[23 Jun 16 21:20 UTC] No.11964396[source]▶
Imagine we had this "systemland" in place, what kind of communication experience we might have?

(For example, I came back to this thread from email notification.)

replies(1): >>11965253 #
4. mmiller ◴[24 Jun 16 00:10 UTC] No.11965253{3}[source]▶
It's difficult at this point to come up with an example, since we don't have it yet (that I know of), but to give you an idea, take a look at Lively Kernel https://www.lively-kernel.org/

If you want a demo, you can take a look here:

https://youtu.be/QTJRwKOFddc

replies(1): >>11965328 #
5. ontouchstart ◴[24 Jun 16 00:24 UTC] No.11965328{4}[source]▶
Yes I have seen it when it first came out. Very impressive.

However, IMHO, there are a few limitations with these "desktop" type of environments:

1. Limited I/O capability.

2. Limited Network capability.

3. Limited mobility.

Follow the trails outlined by Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/TheHumaneRepresentationOfThought/note.... , it seems that we are yet to find the "systemland" for the future.