Bret Victor - Seeing Spaces

Colin McDonnell
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2017–2026
YouTube
21K views · 11 years ago · talk · intermediate · evergreen

Bret Victor's 2014 talk Seeing Spaces argues that creators need to see inside what they are building, and imagines physical workspaces equipped for that. It ties into his work on room-scale, physical computing and the thinking behind the RealTalk project.

HN people hold it up as a talk that should have woken the industry to reverse debuggers and seeing inside systems, and list it among the core Bret Victor talks.

“should have woken up this whole industry”
Tools for thought & programming UXPrototyping
#bretvictor#seeingspaces#visiblesystems#debugging#physicalcomputing#toolsforthought

9 comments from Hacker News

s
@slifin2026 · in “Coding is not solved”
I hate that in our industry we refuse to operationalise reverse debuggers "I never understood the code. You think it works a certain way, until you find out that it doesn't." Bret Victor made a talk called "seeing spaces" in 2014 that should have woken up this whole industry: ▶ this video He emphasizes that without the ability to see inside what is being built, creators often fall into "non-scientific thinking" (14:42), moving away from deep understanding and instead "blindly following recipes, from superstitions and rules of thumb" (14:47-14:51). The worse is performance problems I've had engineers say some bizzaro things when discussing performance — we have the tools you can just measure the answer - we don't need to waste our time guessing
Strongly recommendsView on HN
y
@yesenadam2023 · in “Ask HN: Has anyone fully attempted Bret Victor's vision?”
For the people asking who is Bret Victor: When "What are your favourite tech talks of all time?" is asked on HN, he gets more mentions than anyone else, usually. Some of his talks: Inventing on Principle link The Future of Programming link The Humane Representation of Thought link Media for Thinking the Unthinkable link Seeing Spaces ▶ this video Drawing Dynamic Visualizations link link
RecommendsView on HN
s
@skadamat2017 · in “The HARC First Year Report”
Highly recommend Bret's 2 talks for context: [1] Seeing Spaces: ▶ this video [2] Humane Representation of Thought: link
RecommendsView on HN
s
@skadamat2017 · in “Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?”
It's going to be entirely different I feel. Instead of manipulating graphics on a flat screen, focus will probably be on manipulating physical objects on a table / in a room. Watch his 2 talks that highlight the thinking and inspiration behind the RealTalk project: ▶ this video link
RecommendsView on HN
s
@skadamat2024 · in “Show HN: Sava OS – A desktop interface for your web browser”
This is pretty neat! I wish web browsers on Mac could span to 2-3 monitors because then you could really build a great spatial environment for web browsing. ▶ this video
CitesView on HN
s
@skadamat2024 · in “Debugging hardware is hard”
Reminds me of Bret Victor's Seeing Spaces talk: ▶ this video
CitesView on HN
r
@rslice2022 · in “Show HN: I made a volumetric audio visualizer”
I'm developing Hyperstep[0], a spatial language for music production. I find using existing DAWs frustrating because they don't allow me to navigate and operate intuitively on the latent spaces behind my musical ideas. This is why I've decided to build my own set of "seeing tools".(Bret Victor)[1]. I'm also convinced that by framing music as processes and interactions in the 3D world, spatialization and mixing should become fairly pain-free. I'm still early in development and I would love to build this into an actual product that can be integrated into existing DAWs or even turn it into a musical framework itself for AR and VR experiences. If you're interested in working on it or if you simply want to know more, feel free to contact me. [0] link [1] ▶ this video
CitesView on HN
m
@mitchtbaum2018 · in “Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?”
on one level, yes on another, they're down right scary and overwhelming, or at least dumbfounding and perplexing ..thinking specifically about The Humane Representation of Thought link I had to stop it half way through.. :-/ see also Seeing Spaces ▶ this video and Media for Thinking the Unthinkable link
CitesView on HN
f
@fao_2018 · in “Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine (2012)”
Mm. I've been wondering recently why is it that Programmers don't have more specialized tools (Which incidentally reminds me of this lecture: [Bret Victor -- Seeing Spaces] ▶ this video). It's interesting to think that high-performance traders have an entire market dedicated to specialized computer interfaces, terminals, etc. all focused on improving their productivity and ability to reason about the stock exchange. link As the top poster says about the Bloomberg terminals: ""1. You have to have a Bloomberg keyboard to work in finance. It's not even a question. It's a COGS for anybody who wants to work in finance or trading.""
CitesView on HN