HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

I got this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10328784. Thanks vmorgulis!

If you haven't heard one of Alan Kay's many explanations of Sutherland's seminal Sketchpad work ("a Newton-like leap"), here's a wonderful one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY-hBgYLJqc#t=46m30s. Note the reference to Wes Clark, the pioneering system designer who died recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11183970). Clark liked Sutherland and gave him computer time in the middle of the night, which is how the Newton-like leap came to be.

⬐ agumonkey

There's way too much Kay content online nowadays. Thanks for the tip. It's cool to see him rant about the forgotten wonders on stage, it's a different thing to see him look around like a kid when describing sketchpad 'face to face'.

⬐ dang

I got to meet him last week and couldn't resist gushing about how much I've learned from him. He seemed embarrassed. I couldn't help it—there's no one who's influenced me more in computing. He's agreed to do an AMA on HN, so hopefully we can set that up soon.

If you get beyond its terrible sound quality, that YouTube video has many stretches of Alan riffing that are pure gold. He embodies the history of our field and the values of the classic ARPA community culture. Much of that precious stuff is encoded in oral culture that we don't have a good way of continuing. I wish we could find a way for HN to facilitate that. It already does, to a small extent. But we need more than just to capture it as history, we need to carry it on, and I don't see that happening.

⬐ borplk

I hardly understood a single thing they talked about.

⬐ noblethrasher

Since you’re a programmer (based on your comment history) I recommend the following videos to get up to speed on Alan Kay:

“OOPSLA 97 Keynote” “Normal Considered Harmful” “The Future Doesn’t have to be Incremental”

These are all available on YouTube.

⬐ Nemcue

As he does in the preface of the video, before you watch the interview I would recommend reading up on who Alan Kay is, his work, and the places he has worked (e.g. Xerox PARC).

⬐ random778

This video is private. Sorry about that.

alt link?

⬐ morphle

A wonderful interview. Alan made me realize why I myself wasn't educated in any real sense. Now that I am educated, mostly by him, our two startups and research institute do the right Science and make the right technology (a programming language, an operating system, a user interface, the manycore hardware to run it on and a new internet based on new switch protocol abstractions) and is becoming more successful because of Alan's teachings. I recommend this interview as a starting point for your own education. If you feel like combining such self-education with crazy hard work at our startups implementing Alan's ideas please contact us to help you on your way. I also recommend the two lectures by Alan on our startup home page http://www.morphle.org . "Is it really complex or did we just make it complicated?" has a demo of the new languages and operating system we implement at Morphle and MetaMorph research.