
Alan Kay's Reading List - lazydon
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysReadingList
======
arethuza
Even more than _Cosmos_ I regard _The Ascent of Man_ as the documentary series
that had the biggest impact on me - I was probably only 8 when it was shown on
the BBC, but I can still remember watching it, particularly this:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0PDGZKGAWs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0PDGZKGAWs)

NB The Leó Szilárd he mentions was the Hungarian physicist who had the
original idea for an atomic bomb while crossing a road in London in 1933, as
Richard Rhodes described it:

 _" The stoplight changed to green. Szilárd stepped off the curb. As he
crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the
future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come."_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3_Szil%C3%A1rd)

------
bennesvig
Here's Alan Kay talking about The Inner Game of Tennis
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos)

~~~
avodonosov
super! thanks

------
brianstorms
Years ago I interviewed Alan at his home in LA. First thing that struck me
about his house was the BOOKS, books everywhere, bookshelves everywhere,
shelves in every room, every hallway, stacked everywhere, just nonstop books.
Of course, as we were walking through the house before we even sat down, I
asked about the books. He proudly told me he read a new book every day. On
every subject under the sun.

I knew it was gonna be a great interview... it was.

~~~
vijayr
One book, _every_ day? How is it sustainable? Did he know of any speed
reading/understanding/retaining techniques?

~~~
jwdunne
I think part of it is that he has been reading fluently from a young age. My
son can barely recognise his name and he's nearly 4. That's a very good head
start in terms of practice. It might also be due to a strong natural ability.

------
pfraze
Three talks by Alan Kay that I highly recommend, particularly the first two:
[http://pfraze.github.io/2014/03/31/the-mandatory-alan-
kay.ht...](http://pfraze.github.io/2014/03/31/the-mandatory-alan-kay.html)

------
psykotic
On several occasions, Kay has mentioned Molecular Biology of the Cell as an
outstanding example of how modern technology can be used to create textbooks
in the aid of comprehension rather than spectacle. An example of vulgar abuse
by Kay's standards would be any of the massive, technicolored tomes with names
like Calculus or College Physics.

------
gyepi
I read _The Inner Game of Tennis_ based on Alan Kay's description in a youtube
video. It is an excellent book.

I am glad to see Csikszenmihalyi on the list as well. Flow is a very powerful
concept; we all know it, but understanding it and using it effectively is a
different matter entirely.

After reading _The Miracle of Mindfulness_ by Thich Nhat Hanh, I realized that
all three books are actually talking about the same subject from different
perspectives.

To this list, I would add:

anything by Robert Grudin, but especially:

 _Time and the Art of Living_ and _The Grace of Great Things_

 _How to solve it_ by G. Polya

 _Conceptual Blockbusting_ by James Adams

Nice to see the Mortimer Adler recommendation as well, but I think his _How to
Read a Book_ should be a prerequisite for serious reading.

As I've gotten older, I've come to the conclusion that true understanding
requires the kind of depth that comes from knowing one's self intimately. It's
a lot harder than it sounds, especially for a technologist.

------
laxatives
How does one even go about reading 5000 books? I know it only says his library
is 5000 books, but what's the point in amassing a library if you haven't read
it? That would be nearly two books a week for 50 years. Imagine if even 5% of
those were text books.

~~~
Jun8
To cure you out of this vision of a library I would suggest you read Umberto
Eco's essay "How to Justify a Private Library” in _How to Travel with a Salmon
& Other Essays_, it's great! In _The Black Swan_ Taleb summarizes the lesson
from this essay as:

"“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are
encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal
library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two
categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a
library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a
very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-
boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than
unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your
financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market
allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as
you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will
look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of
unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”"

~~~
wazoox
I have a room filled with several thousand books I've read, an a shelf in my
bedroom filled with several hundred books I bought to read later. Then I have
2 ebook readers with several hundred other books, some I've read, some I
haven't read yet.

As a child, I've been pretty impressed the first time I've been to some
friend's home where there was only a few books, the dictionary, the Guinness
book of records and a couple of large, picture books that nobody ever reads. I
was so alien to me; even at the age of 12 my bedroom had its longest wall
entirely covered in bookshelves.

~~~
cgio
Same thing here. There is nothing worse than carrying my books in boxes and
being afraid to unpack them because I move every 7-8 months. I have a reader,
but the feeling is definitely not the same. I also tend to at least read the
introduction of every book I think might be of interest even if I do not read
it all. I am not reading a book per day, though, as Alan Kay; one per week
(and a couple dozen introductions)is closer to my limits with 2 children at
home.

~~~
arethuza
I now listen to a lot of audiobooks - I only listen to the unabridged ones
otherwise it feels like cheating. The big advantage being I can listen to them
while walking to/from work and while doing other things like cooking - that's
probably 2 hours a day.

[NB Audible is awesome - I particularly like how you can return a book if you
don't like it, something I've only done a couple of times but is a great
feature to have].

------
jacobolus
Previously
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664324)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92007)

------
enen
I just read his Wikipedia page and his early life. What's the point in even
trying at life...

~~~
dmoney
Imagine being Kay and having to watch GUIs get increasingly dumbed down,
people using Object Oriented Programming to refer to things nothing like what
you created, people not using computers to the full potential you thought you
had enabled decades ago. "Guys! You're doing it wrong!"

But this means there's still a lot of room for "innovation" to build on top of
his "inventions" (distinction he made in a talk that[1] was posted here
yesterday: invention being creating new things, innovation being the task of
bringing them to market). Or if that's not your deal, he laid out the kind of
environment that's required to create new inventions. You could try to work in
such an environment or create one.

It's probably too late to have the same "early life" that he did, but you've
learned to read, if you're here you've probably learned to code, and chances
are you've still got at least a couple "lives"[2] left in you.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7538063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7538063)

[2] [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2722](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2722)

------
applecore
Should we add _Human Universals_ to this list?

~~~
unphasable
seems impossible to find, at least last time I checked.

------
solomatov
It's interesting that there's no single book on math or algorithms there.

------
avodonosov
I can't even complete this list, how can he read all these books...

~~~
mindcrime
Well, Alan Kay isn't a young guy. Presumably, he's been reading for many
years. Knock out a couple a year and you should be good to go.

On the flip side, remember this any time you read someone else's "recommended
reading list"... if YOU sat down and wrote your "recommended reading list" it
would probably also be very long and impressive as well.. it would just
(probably) have a lot of different titles on it.

~~~
elviejo
He learnt to read when he was an infant.. I remember clearly in a conference
he said: "... by the time I got to school I have read a couple of hundred
books ..."

------
steveeq1
He should have listed Sussman's and Abelson's classic "Structure and
Interpretation of Computer Programs" in the "Computers" section:
[http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-
text/book/book.html](http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html)

------
dalek2point3
who does this website belong to? c2.com? really cool domain name, mustve been
an early adopter?

~~~
mindcrime
It belongs to Ward Cunningham, basically. And yeah, I suppose you could say
they were early adopters:

    
    
      [prhodes@captainchaos ~]$ whois c2.com
      [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com]
      [Redirected to whois.name.com]
      [Querying whois.name.com]
      [whois.name.com]
      Domain Name: C2.COM 
      Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.name.com 
      Registrar URL: http://www.name.com 
      Updated Date: 2013-09-30T16:21:59-06:00 
      Creation Date: 1994-10-23T04:00:00-06:00

------
doomrobo
Surprised GEB isn't in there

~~~
coolsunglasses
Many didn't like GEB and found it a bit vacuous and longer than the material
merited.

~~~
hhm
That's me. I can understand why people like it, but I found more rigorous
materials on the same subject to be a lot more interesting.

~~~
kikibobo69
Care to recommend some alternatives?

~~~
coolsunglasses
[http://learnyouahaskell.com/](http://learnyouahaskell.com/)

[https://github.com/NICTA/course/](https://github.com/NICTA/course/)

[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/)

[http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/06/you-could-have-
invented...](http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/06/you-could-have-invented-
free-monads.html)

[http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel-
Velleman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Prove-Structured-Daniel-
Velleman/dp/0521675995/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396828090&sr=1-5&keywords=how+to+solve+it)

~~~
delian66
I do not understand ... please, can you elaborate what is the connection
between GEB (which I presume is 'Gödel, Escher, Bach') and for example the
"Learn you a Haskell" book ? They are both good books, but I do not think that
books about programming languages are suitable _alternatives_ to GEB.

~~~
coolsunglasses
Strange loops come up all the time in Haskell.

Cf. loeb

[http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blow_your_mind#Other](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Blow_your_mind#Other)

Understanding type theory and set theory is a common side effect of learning
Haskell and are critical in understanding Godel.

Also there's never a bad time to learn Haskell.

------
interstitial
I've read most of them, close to 90% -- and I still suck at life. Your mileage
will vary.

~~~
laxatives
It says Alan Kay has a library of 5000 books. Do you have 5000 books?

~~~
interstitial
Actually my library is closer to 10,000.

~~~
laxatives
How do you maintain such a library? Do you devote a portion of your house? I
always thought I had a pretty sizable library, but its probably <1000 books
(and probably <500). As of now, its basically one book shelf with 5 rows, 2 of
which are filled with paperbacks and two books deep (the other rows are larger
books, including textbooks and only a single book deep) and another drawer
filled with things that are in my reading queue, maybe 50 books total. I'm
still rather young (I just graduated undergrad in December), but I can't
imagine having a library of 10,000 books without a sizable portion of my life
revolving around maintaining such a monstrosity. It must have cost you a small
fortune to acquire 10,000 books and a room to house all of them in anything
but cardboard boxes.

~~~
laxatives
I just got home and I'm looking at this book shelf now and there's probably
less than 150 books here. I'm just incredulous that you can have a 10,000 book
library without being incredibly eccentric and wealthy, or maybe a well off
professor or book fanatic. 10,000 books must take at least 1000 sq ft to store
(assuming you arrange in such a way that these books are accessible, not just
piled 8 feet high in storage boxes) -- realistically probably double or triple
that if you wanted a place to sit down and do all of this reading, unless you
have extremely high ceilings and a rolling ladder.

I just did some quick googling, and your assertion is the equivalent of owning
1/5 of a smaller sized Barnes & Noble, the smallest of which are around 3000
sq feet, or a fairly large detached 3 story home with maybe 4-5 bedrooms in a
suburban area. Yes, Barnes and Noble doesn't organize it efficiently for
storage, but for display, my point still stands that 10,000 books in a
personal library is extreme.

------
gabriel
Did you all see at the bottom: "COMPUTERS (most of the good stuff is still in
papers, here are a few books)"

Most of the good stuff is still in paper!

~~~
MichaelGG
In papers, meaning not published books but papers in journals.

