On: Alan Kay at Startup School [video]

[dang → galacticpony]

Alan's not working on startups. The rest of your comment can be compressed to name-calling ('horrible', 'unacceptable'), and thence to nothing.

Please don't post like this to HN. More than half the thread is now in these weeds.

[pjmorris → galacticpony]

Maybe there is something to learn in that he has been able to be effective without great slides.

[0x445442 → pjmorris]

All the comments here about Kay's presentation media are missing a key point... Let's put aside any subjective assessment of whether or not the slides are good or bad. The more interesting thing is how they're made. They're made with a tool in the Squeak Smalltalk environment. I didn't watch this particular presentation but I've watched others Kay has done and the things he's doing with his slides simply aren't possible with PowerPoint or KeyNote.

My guess is he's being covertly meta about his presentations because he really never gets into any detail about the tech he's using to create his presentations.

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, the package he uses for his presentation is not openly available.

[galacticpony2 → pjmorris]

Has he been effective, though? Haven't many of his ideas not become popular? Aren't we all not using the idea of OOP that he had in mind?

He's talking about the future, which may or may not have more of his ideas realized. We'll see.

[mflindell → galacticpony]

you might be confusing user interface with graphic design

[galacticpony2 → mflindell]

Aesthetics is a part of interface design. There can be no divorce here. Even if there could, aesthetics would still matter at another level.

[mozumder → galacticpony]

His visual style is very much on trend: http://www.brutalistwebsites.com

I find his slides to be great and wacky - the opposite of boring.

[mwfj → galacticpony]

Well, that was of course the missing component that Steve Jobs added after licensing this tech.

[throwaway7645 → galacticpony]

Y must it be fancy and shiny? Only functional matters to me.

[dragonwriter → throwaway7645]

Because communicating with the user is function. An unpleasant UI for the actual target audience is a functional failure.

[throwaway7645 → dragonwriter]

Slightly ugly doesn't interfere with communications does it?

[dragonwriter → throwaway7645]

It increases friction, even if it doesn't come pletely block communication. In that case, it is similar to an avoidable performance-affecting design flaw that doesn't impact the correctness of th eventual result.

[kgwxd → galacticpony]

"First of all, that's completely wrong, especially when it comes to startups."

Are you saying his presentations are some kind of startup? It is completely right that aesthetics don't really matter for his presentations. In my experience, aesthetics only matter when trying to sell turds as diamonds. People will use useful things, regardless of aesthetics. Sadly, they'll also use useless things because of aesthetics.

[santaclaus → kgwxd]

> aesthetics only matter when trying to sell turds as diamonds

When it comes to printed (or any kind of graphical) communication, form and function are very closely tied. The vertical text at 23:15 is (at least to my western eye) super distracting and hard to read, and I have no idea what I should be looking at on the screen.

[kgwxd → santaclaus]

Aside from the obviously messed up slides, I think everything there was pretty readable. I think odd layouts might actually help remember the content. When you mention the vertical text slide I can picture it almost perfectly in my head. If it had been just another evenly spaced, clearly typed bullet list among 50 others just like it, I would have a harder time recalling it. However, there is a time and place for aesthetics and that's after the functionality has been clearly established, since he's been giving essentially this same talk for tens of years, he probably could put a bit of time into the slides :)