Alan Kay - Programming and Scaling

Hi Josh, You raise some interesting points in your article. I wonder how to comment or discuss this the most efficient way (here or elsewhere?) Some questions: Have you looked at haiku? What you describe as modules, I think Alan Kay calls "objects" in the smalltalk/Xerox tradition. Have you looked at his research project: STEPS reinventing programming? ▶ this video Some bits and parts of this is open source. Imagine a full system running on 10000 LoC I think this could be a step forward. Also this blurs if not throws away the distinction between "desktop and web(remote)" applications. Because if integration of remote objects is sandboxed but still transparent you get improved usability. Also I think you go not far enough. Databases for file system are fine but I think the ida of widgets or UI libraries altogether is not feasible anymore. The system has to adopt to a individual level, people have different needs and workflows. Highly adoptable and conversational interfaces are needed. WDYT?

You're all over the place here and your arguments make no sense whatsoever when examined. First, you conflate mass-appeal with some sort of objective "better" criterion which is of course bonkers. To use one of your own examples against you, there are hundreds of thousands of Java monkeys out there that are using glue other people made to tie together rocks to build stonewalls. Which do fail as soon as the weather stops being nice. Security (you should look into Java deserialization bugs), reliability, performance what do they know about any of these things? Second, you conflate late-binding as present in Lisp and Smalltalk with late-binding present in other dynamic languages. The two are not equivalent, a perfect example of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Lisp and Smalltalk will never become popular (read my previous comment), but that does not mean that they do not sit on an apex and still have a lot to give. To anyone interested in the "craft of programming", "the Art", there is nothing better period. Here are some references for you, from the masters themselves: [1] link [2] ▶ this video [3] link

These aren't necessarily my absolute favorite talks, but they're great mind-altering talks a little off the beaten path so I'd like to highlight them: "Writing A Thumb Drive From Scratch" by Travis Goodspeed - link Excellent talk on the hardware side of security, goes into some really cool theoretical hard disk defense stuff, incredibly insightful and introduces a hardware security tech toy so fun you'll want to go out and order it the moment you're done watching. The speaker is entertaining as all heck to boot. "Programming and Scaling" by Alan Kay - ▶ this video Interesting talk on the theoretical limits of code size and engineering versus tinkering. Also talks a lot about Alan Kay's philosophy of computer science which analogizes systems to biological systems, which are the systems with the largest proven scaling on the planet. "The Mother Of All Demos" by Douglas Engelbart - link This talk is so prescient you won't believe your eyes. Given in 1968, Douglas demonstrates just about every major computing concept in use today on a modern machine, along with some ones that are still experimental or unevenly distributed such as smooth remote desktop and collaborative editing.

Reminds me of some Alan Kay talks: ▶ this video He actually mentions the book that is the source for the first illustration in the article. He also often talks about the speed of molecules and how it's counter-intuitive to the commonplace idea of cell operation. Cell biology was an inspiration for original OOP (which wasn't much like Java/C++ at all). When reading about Covid stuff and immunity, I often think how these mechanism could be imitated in engineering. I definitely believe there are some general principles that we could benefit from without trying to "simulate" biology. Edit: Sorry, same author/illustrator, but different book.

It's a thing of its own. Used to be called informatics in some countries. Much better name, IMO. There are large parts of computer science that have nothing to do with computers. They're about information and can be applied outside of computers. I'm with Alan Kay when he says "computer science" used to be an aspiration and eventually became a misnomer. Same with software engineering. ▶ this video (Doesn't mean CS and SE are always "worse" than science and engineering. But they are currently very different.)