
Notes by Andy Hertzfeld on Alan Kay's talk at Creative Think seminar, July 1982 - tosh
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Creative_Think.txt
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AceJohnny2
> _Systems programmers are high priests of a low cult_

Ouch :p

Part of the issue is that "systems" are no longer designed holistically [1],
and instead follow Conway's Law [2], which leads subcomponents to be designed
in isolation and then combined as best as possible.

Systems programmers build the foundation of a software platform, without a
clear vision of the end goal. They focus on the intricate details of the
platform, but pay little attention to how this fits in the final product.

[1] maybe only at Apple, inheritors of Kay's approach?

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law)

~~~
justin66
> Part of the issue is that "systems" are no longer designed holistically

The "high priests" line is a Bob Barton quote, which I believe probably dates
back to the mid-sixties.

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AceJohnny2
Thanks! I did not know that. Do you know what he meant in context?

~~~
justin66
I'm not comfortable offering some kind of deep interpretation of my own, but
it's been mentioned jokingly by James Mickens and jokingly but seriously by
Alan Kay, whose speeches are all worth watching. I thought it was interesting,
based on Hertzfeld's notes, that Kay has been quoting Barton on this for such
a long time.

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tosh
""" Magnetic Fields: Find a central metaphor that's so good that everything
aligns to it. Design meetings are no longer necessary, it designs itself. The
metaphor should be crisp and fun. """

this might not always be possible but if you can reveal a powerful, clear
metaphor (& oh my are good metaphors tricky to come by!) the resulting
alignment is truly liberating.

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compiler-guy
"People who are serious about software should make their own hardware."
Classic and true.

~~~
Austin_Conlon
He unpacks that here: [https://www.quora.com/What-did-Steve-Jobs-mean-when-he-
said-...](https://www.quora.com/What-did-Steve-Jobs-mean-when-he-said-that-
Apple-is-fundamentally-a-software-company-Was-he-right/answer/Alan-Kay-11).

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kanobo
"Turn up your nose at good ideas. You must work on great ideas, not good ones"
\- I admire Alan Kay deeply and love reading his writings and philosophy. I
respect how he inspired the early generations to do incredible things - but
for me personally he is a warning to not be hung up on 'great' ideas. He was
ahead of his time in the 70s, but the world flew by. Even today he dwells on
dynabooks, smalltalk, etc in his lectures - all innovative ideas for its
time... but they never evolved and don't translate well in today's world (see
One Laptop per Child)

~~~
lovelyviking
So what is wrong with "One Laptop per Child" ?

~~~
kanobo
There's lots of different takes on why it failed, you can search 'olpc
criticisms' on google and you'll find many articles with endless takes. To me
they had many 'great' and inspiring design ideas that were completely out of
touch with reality. For example, trying to put a handcrank on a laptop and the
completely unfamiliar UI.

~~~
paganel
It was also because MS and Intel sabotaged it. OLPC probably would have never
worked anyway but the actions taken by the two companies left a very sour
taste for me. Also, the “right-click any program in order to see its source-
code” was an idea many generations ahead of its time, one that I’m afraid we
won’t ever get to see, actually.

~~~
renox
Partly due to Alan Kay's STEPS project failure to release meaningful code
sources, you're right.. Frank (
[https://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf](https://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf)
) would have had A LOT of interested developer/user if they had released the
code.

~~~
jecel
It is not easy to find and even harder to actually use, but here are the
sources:

[http://tinlizzie.org/dbjr/](http://tinlizzie.org/dbjr/)

I also was sent a frank.image that runs on Squeak and uses these files but
don't know where that can be found.

~~~
renox
Thanks for the link! If you're able to find the image I'm interested, please
PM me.

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ilestkempo
Was there any recordings of Alan Kay’s talk that day? Love to read these notes
and hear the talk side-by-side.

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m463
Alan Kay has given some really interesting talks.

I think these are the ones I saw:

[https://youtu.be/id1WShzzMCQ](https://youtu.be/id1WShzzMCQ)

[https://youtu.be/1e8VZlPBx_0](https://youtu.be/1e8VZlPBx_0)

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helloworld
Twenty-five years before social media became mainstream, this observation
seems so prophetic:

 _Sharing is important - we 're all communication junkies_

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thinkling
> The whole notion of 'programming language' is wrong.

Anyone know what Alan Kay meant by this or have a pointer to an expansion?

~~~
cxr
Alan Kay is a proponent for the notion of pervasive use of objects that work
by sending and receiving messages, which leads to things like Smalltalk
famously having no "if" statements. The attitude is pretty similar to the one
that Lisp folks have. It's possible that Hertzfeld had a different takeaway
than what Kay meant, but it's not clear.

~~~
hboon
In case it wasn't clear, Smalltalk does have if statements. They just aren't
special keywords like in most other languages; instead, they are methods of
the True/False classes.

The way it is implemented (hopefully) opens up the mind to how OO actually can
work, but in practise, when you use if-else in Smalltalk, it's pretty much the
same as in other languages.

