HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

on one level, yes

on another, they're down right scary and overwhelming, or at least dumbfounding and perplexing

..thinking specifically about The Humane Representation of Thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg I had to stop it half way through.. :-/

see also Seeing Spaces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTjiXjqHrQ and Media for Thinking the Unthinkable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUaOucZRlmE

Mm. I've been wondering recently why is it that Programmers don't have more specialized tools (Which incidentally reminds me of this lecture: [Bret Victor -- Seeing Spaces] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTjiXjqHrQ).

It's interesting to think that high-performance traders have an entire market dedicated to specialized computer interfaces, terminals, etc. all focused on improving their productivity and ability to reason about the stock exchange.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732258

As the top poster says about the Bloomberg terminals:

""1. You have to have a Bloomberg keyboard to work in finance. It's not even a question. It's a COGS for anybody who wants to work in finance or trading.""

⬐ yourapostasy

At the end of the day, the reason such a market hasn’t grown around programmers the way it has around financial instrument traders is because programmers are still in the “expense” column while traders are in the “income” column or at worst, the “cost of sales” column. Interestingly enough, many fintech companies tend to avoid this classification of their programmers. The closer programmers get to the incoming money spigot, the less they are treated as “expense” column line items.

Highly recommend Bret's 2 talks for context:

[1] Seeing Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTjiXjqHrQ [2] Humane Representation of Thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg&t=1913s

⬐ westoncb

I saw them both a while back, and reviewed the poster for Seeing Spaces just now. However, I haven't been unable to find anything that addresses the issue I brought up.

I agree very much with most of the general principles Victor talks about (you can see my own extensive work on making program behavior visible here[0] for example)—but when it comes to the space concept, I have difficulty finding something concrete about how the space would be used beneficially. I get the flavor of this idea that your workspace should be 'extension of your body', but at this point, years after becoming familiar with it, I'd like to get more concrete on the subject. Dynamicland/Realtalk certainly are more concrete—but my thoughts on it are reflected in my first comment.

[0] http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd

⬐ DaniFong

visit and donate. they need help.

it's foolish to speculate on the possibilities of a new medium on this extraordinarily limited medium. i can't even embed images here.

⬐ westoncb

I'm pursuing similar lines myself, and am only able to work in spare moments due to lack of funds, so I'm in no position to donate.

> it's foolish to speculate on the possibilities of a new medium on this extraordinarily limited medium

I'll be happy to be shown otherwise, but I haven't yet found any counter-example to the idea that the 'verbal medium' is sufficient to describe any principle. So my original question still remains: is there some principle which would allow them to achieve similar generality to traditional computing without using some kind of re-combinable primitives?

Edit: to be more specific: without that, how could this ever compete with AR? People could build their own spatially interesting, room-scale workspaces without having to find physical materials to build every application out of. The fact that it can deal with actual physical things has an appeal to it, but I can't see any way of escaping the tradeoff of a massive loss in generality.

⬐ Glench

> how could this ever compete with AR?

"How could the written word ever compete with pictograms?" It's a different medium with real benefits and tradeoffs. Right now for you it's all theoretical, but one day hopefully you'll be able to see for yourself if the medium has the time to grow, breathe, expand, and develop. Funding Dynamicland means that we as a species have the option of seeing how that medium might work if it was allowed to flourish.

⬐ westoncb

We'll, I wish you guys luck and sincerely hope this removes some desk time from my life :)

It's going to be entirely different I feel. Instead of manipulating graphics on a flat screen, focus will probably be on manipulating physical objects on a table / in a room.

Watch his 2 talks that highlight the thinking and inspiration behind the RealTalk project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTjiXjqHrQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg