
Alan Kay's reading list - wowsig
http://shelfjoy.com/shelfjoy/alan-kay-from-viewpoints-research-institute-recommends-his-reading-list-for-beginners
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dang
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Alan%20Kay%27s%20reading%20lis...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Alan%20Kay%27s%20reading%20list&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

Dozens(!) of comments by Alan on the last one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803165).

------
giardini
Had to laugh at the entry

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian
Jaynes.

When I first saw this ominous-looking tome on a bookstore shelf my heart sank:
I knew that I would never, ever be able to title a book to match this one.

Never mind that the book's contents is likely misguided - the title is simply
the ultimate author's dream title. Indeed, to paraphrase Keats, it is "a thing
of beauty [and] a joy forever."

~~~
mirimir
I enjoyed it, many years ago. And it was good background for Stephenson's
_Snow Crash_. I vaguely recall that its thesis, and Sperry's work on split-
brain patients, were out of favor for quite a while. But maybe attracting
renewed support?

~~~
kranner
Westworld (the TV series) is making it popular again.

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kevinSuttle
OP: what is the source of this list?

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wowsig
Hey, here it is
[http://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysReadingList](http://wiki.c2.com/?AlanKaysReadingList)

~~~
DavidSJ
If I may say so, that is a much less noisy and more readable version of this
list.

~~~
wowsig
You are entitled to your opinion. Less noisy, I agree. More readable, I agree
on that too. But if you want to take actions on the list, like add them to
your reading list or even know a little bit more about the books, it takes
quite a few back and forth between Google/Amazon whatever you are using.

And if a lot of people are interested in that (and people are interested),
that's a lot of work for a lot of people.

That's what I've tried to reduce here.

~~~
justin66
The title _Alan Kay from Viewpoints Research Institute recommends his reading
list for beginners_ is problematical. The present tense "recommends" implies
that Alan Kay was involved in the presentation of this page, either using it
as a tool to present his recommendations, or giving his recommendations to an
interviewer who created the page. On the contrary, it appears this list was
just harvested from other people's (old!) work, without attribution.

I wonder how many people who've "recommended" or "curated" stuff on ShelfJoy
have actually... recommended or curated stuff on ShelfJoy? So far I've looked
at four pages and only one seems to sort of look like it was created by the
person whose name was on the top of the page. The header _Book Recommendations
from Alex Turnbull from Groove_ is as ambiguous as the rest, with no author
listed and no date, but it includes a "Notes" section for each book. That guy
must have written the notes, right?

So the way to tell if any given ShelfJoy page is really written by the person
whose name at the top is the presence or absence of those notes next to the
book titles? Or is there more to it?

edit: the title _Books that Bill Gates reviewed in his notes_ strikes me as
clearer.

~~~
wowsig
Oh! I get the confusion. A lot of recommendations are done by people on email
where they send their notes to me. Alex Turnbull was one such example.

However, by putting the title of Alan Kay's reading list as present tense too,
I've muddled it up.

You're right. There are tons of lists that are curated from varied sources,
some from authors' websites, some from university reading lists etc.
Currently, I didn't have a specific section where I could mention the
attribution links, but I think it'll be wrong to continue without it.

I'll work on it right away to integrate a section like that. Till that is
done, I'll make sure there is grammatical distinction between both.

Thanks a lot. This was valuable.

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Kenji
When I look at this list, I see many books that look very interesting. This
seems like exactly the way to look at life which I like. However, I can't read
books anymore. I just find it impossible to sit down and keep my nose in front
of a book for an hour or two. I am so accustomed to reading texts with vast
amounts of information density about precisely the things I need or I am
interested in (usually, I find such articles on the internet) that I cannot
sustain the motivation to read an entire book anymore (not to mention, reading
takes intellectual resources which are valuable and assigned to other tasks).
Does anyone know that feeling and what do you do about it?

~~~
jwhite
Yes, I've noticed that about myself too. Reading is a high investment / high
reward activity, and you have to make an effort to do it. One approach is to
set aside a time slot daily where you just read, like the hour before bed time
for example. You could also set goals for your self (e.g. read a book a week,
a chapter a night, etc.) but that might turn it into a chore and make it less
likely that you'll stick with it. It depends on your personality I suppose.

I've also noticed that reading in the office attracts strange looks sometimes.
I don't know what to do about that. Reading research papers and text books
related to what one is working on should be encouraged in a knowledge
profession, yet I almost never see colleagues doing it. I guess if your hands
aren't on the keyboard those JIRA tickets won't get closed.

~~~
dilemma
I just use the kindle app on my phone and read on the bus, subway, anytime I'm
waiting for something.

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chmaynard
Articles, videos, etc. about Alan Kay show up frequently on HN. This puzzles
me. Kay seems like a peripheral figure in the history of CS. I know him mainly
for his work on Smalltalk and his iconoclastic views on trends in CS and the
tech industry.

Is there a consensus in the CS community that Kay is an important figure who
deserves this kind of adulation? Do any of us really understand or care about
his achievements? Just asking.

~~~
mjn
He's considered important in at least two fairly central, mainstream R&D
areas. One, object-oriented programming, where his development of message-
passing OO and the design of Smalltalk are an influential line of thought. And
two, interactive, iterative development environments, which you can think of
as attempts to create a more visual, structured next-gen of the REPL paradigm.

It's true that his specific outputs there (Smalltalk, Squeak, etc.) have never
become that mainstream. But: 1) they have become much more widely used than a
lot of other research systems (Smalltalk is not just some PhD thesis used by 3
people), and 2) being even "highly influential" on two major areas of
development that _are_ mainstream-important is a pretty high bar to clear
already.

~~~
shalabhc
Also, Dynabook? And the GUI?

[http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/laptop-
invented](http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/laptop-invented)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface)

