Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
I want to try using a fluffy pop song to sell a protest album... it worked for others before me:) If you're really lucky, some people will accidentally listen to your other songs. (metaphorically speaking) A spoonful of sugar -- Casey On Jul 25, 2011, at 10:47 PM, Alan Kay alan.n...@yahoo.com wrote: The trivial take on computing today by both the consumers and most of the professionals would just be another pop music to wince at most of the time, if it weren't so important for how future thinking should be done. ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 26/07/2011, at 3:47 PM, Alan Kay wrote: But the dilemma is: what happens if this is the route and the children and adults reject it for the much more alluring human universals? Even if almost none of them lead to a stable, thriving, growth inducing and prosperous civilization? These are the issues I care about. You seem to be seeing these two as orthogonal. I see them as mutually complementing. (ie we drive people to what they need through what they want... ) Julian.___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 26/07/2011, at 1:33 AM, Igor Stasenko wrote: On 25 July 2011 16:16, Julian Leviston jul...@leviston.net wrote: On 26/07/2011, at 12:03 AM, Igor Stasenko wrote: Interestingly that many today's trendy and popular things (which we know today as web) were invented as a temporary solution without any systematic approach. I think that i will be right by saying that most of these technologies (like PHP, Javascript, Ruby, Sendmail etc) is a result of random choice instead making planning and a deep study of problem field before doing anything. And that's why no surprise, they are failing to grow. And now, people trying to fill the gaps in those technologies with security, scalability and so on.. Because they are now well established standards.. while originally was not meant to be used in such form from the beginning. Wow... really? PHP, JavaScript, Ruby and Sendmail are the result of random choice? Random. Because how something , which was done to satisfy minute needs (i wanna script some interactions, so lets do it quick), could grow into something mature without solid foundation? If conceptual flaw is there from the very beginning, how you can fix it? Here what author says about JS: JS had to “look like Java” only less so, be Java’s dumb kid brother or boy-hostage sidekick. Plus, I had to be done in ten days or something worse than JS would have happened Brendan Eich Except that JavaScript is one of the only common popular prototype based object oriented languages, which it turns out is an amazingly flexible system. I don't think this is random. Maybe rushed is what you mean here. Apart from this, Ruby was DEFINITELY not random, or rushed. It's a delicate balance between form and pragmatic functionality. I'll grant you that the internals of the standard interpreter leave a lot to be desired, but I think this is perhaps less to do with randomness and more to do with the fact that perhaps Matz was entirely out of his depth when it came to best of breed for internal language structuring. I think to say that these languages served as a temporary solution is not really very fair on most of them. PHP was basically designed to be an easy way to build dynamic web pages, and popularity drove it to where it is today. I guess where you're coming from is you're attempting to say that none of these languages are being used for what they were originally designed for... possibly (I'd put my weight on saying hopefully) with the exception of Ruby, because Ruby was designed to be beautiful to code in, and to make programmers happy. Ruby is a general purpose language. I really don't know why you include Sendmail in this bunch. I think you're kind of missing the point of the web not being structured properly, though... I think Alan's point is more the case that the fact that we had to use server side languages, as well as languages such as VBScript and JavaScript which the interpreter executes, is an illustration of the fact that STRUCTURALLY, the web is fairly broken. It has nothing to do with language choice (server- or client-side), really, but rather the fact that there is no set of conventions and readily usable standard for programming across the web in such a way that code is run in a protected way on machines where code needs to run. I think as computer programmers, we get quite hung up on the specifics of languages and other potentially somewhat irrelevant details when perhaps they're not the most apposite concerns to be interested in. Apparently a missing systematical approach then strikes back, once it deployed, became popular and used by millions.. Javascript, PHP, Ruby and Sendmail failing to grow? Seriously? What do you mean by grow? It can't surely be popularity... Grow not in popularity of course. Grow in serving our needs. Perhaps you miss the point of why things become large and popular...? :) They're driven by people. And not just some people - by *most* people. Everybody wants to share photos and search for things on the web. Everyone wants their content, and purchases, and the things they want. These people do not care about structural perfection in any way. They care about doing the things they want to do and naught else. Look at Apple if you want to understand a group of people who get this (or maybe only Steve gets this, I don't really know, but I do know someone at Apple fully understand this, and possibly Apple *didn't* understand this when Steve wasn't there). The only way you can drive the future is if you get everyone to come along with you. The only way you can get everyone to come along with you is to play to their understanding level. You make the general lives of everyone on the planet easier, and you will become popular. Say, for example, like making a telephone that is vastly more easy to use than all other telephones on the planet. Now, for tech geeks, it's not really *that* much easier to
Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 26/07/2011, at 12:20 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote: You lost me here. My attitude to Ruby is same as to Perl: lets take bit from here, bit from there, mix well everything and voila! , we having new programming language. It may be good for cooking recipe, but definitely not very good for programming language. I find it strange that many today's mainstream languages evolution is driven by taking same approach: mix blend things together, rather than focusing on completeness, conciseness and clarity. I don't think you understand Ruby very well. PERL and Ruby are quite different. Sure, Ruby borrowed some stuff from PERL (such as built in RegExps, etc) but at its heart, it's pure objects, and behaves very much how you'd expect it to. It's also incredibly compact and beautiful looking, easy to read, and nice. I fell in love with it similarly to how I fell in love with SmallTalk... Julian.___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 26/07/2011, at 12:20 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote: But for programming its a bit different: you giving to people a tool which they will use to craft their own products. And depending on how good/bad this tool are, the end product's quality will vary. And also, it would be too good to be true: if people would have to choose between java and smalltalk based on easy to use criteria, i doub't they would choose java. Marketing takes its toll, the worse one. :) But they *did* choose Java over smalltalk precisely because it's easier to use. You make the mistake of assuming easier to use between experts, but that's not how people adopt languages. One of the reasons Rails became an overnight success for the Ruby and web development communities is because of a 15 minute blog screencast... and a bunch of simple evangelizing the creator of Rails did... he basically showed how easy it was to create a Blog in 15 minutes with comments... Mind you it wasn't a particularly beautiful Blog, but it functioned, nonetheless, and the kicker is... ... it was about twice as easy, twice as fast, and twice as nice to code than in any other comparative programming environment at the time. People adoped Java because it was readily available to learn, and easy to grok in comparison with what they knew, and because it had spunk in the same way that Rails did - it had an attitude, and was perceived as a funky thing. This has to do with marketing and the way our society works. SmallTalk, is incredibly simple, incredibly powerful, but also INCREDIBLY unapproachable for most people not welcoming to abstract thought. Contrast that it took me weeks to understand SmallTalk when I first saw it - even vaguely understand I mean - but it only took me days to understand Java, given that I'd programmed in Basic and C before. This has to do with the sub-cultural context more than anything. Julian.___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 26/07/2011, at 12:20 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote: Say, for example, like making a telephone that is vastly more easy to use than all other telephones on the planet. Now, for tech geeks, it's not really *that* much easier to use... For example, when the iPhone came out, I got one, and the only really useful and different thing in terms of technical specification and features that I could do that I previously couldn't do easily was synchronise my contacts... but everything was quite a bit EASIER to do. In the process, Apple are pushing next gen technologies (next gen for the public is not necessarily next gen for us, mind :)). Mind you, it comes wrapped around their bank account, but it's still coming. Look at Twitter for an example of what people like... this is a ridiculously clear example... it simply allows people to write small messages to whoever is listening. Brilliantly simple, brilliantly clear. Most people want to do this, and so it is popular. The thing with twitter is, though, they're not using this popularity at all. They don't really know what to do with it. Now, what we want to do is make something compelling enough such that it goes off like a rocket. Smalltalk was designed pretty amazingly well, and it had an amazingly large amount of influence, but if you ask most programmers what smalltalk is, they usually haven't heard of it... contrast this to asking people about Java, and they know what that is. :) You even ask them what Object Oriented programming is, and they know that, but you say Heard of Alan Kay? and they give you a blank look. Ask them about Steve Jobs and everyone knows all about him. Hell, what other company has fanboys keeping track of their ADS? (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/24/new-apple-ipad-ad-well-always/ ) What I'm trying to get at here, is that I see no reason why something free can't be popular (facebook? twitter?), but for that to take place, it has to provide something that you simply can't get elsewhere. The advantage the web has had is that it has moved quite quickly and continues to move at whatever pace we like to go at. Nothing else has come along that has outpaced or out innovated it FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE AVERAGE PUNTER. So what is needed is something along the lines of Frank, which when people see what is possible (BY USING IT ONLY, I'd wager), they'll stop using everything else because they simply can't go back to the old way because it feels like the past too much. :) Make something better than all the user or developer experiences out there, and developers like me will evangelise the shit out of it... and other users who care about things will jump on the bandwagon, curators of experience will jump on board, and overnight, a Windows 95 like experience will happen (in terms of market share effect), or perhaps an iPod effect will happen. Remember, it has to be just better than what is possible now, so if you make something infinitely better but just show off how it's just better, and also make it easy to migrate to and easier to use, then you will have already won as the new way of doing things before you've started. Even Apple, our current purveyors of fine user experience and curators of style and design, haven't managed to build a device or user experience in software that allows primarily convention, ease of use and unclutteredness, and yet then the total ability to configure things for people who want things to do exactly what they want them to do (ie coders, programmers, and advanced users). They hit the 80/20 rule quite well in terms of giving 80 percent of people everything they need, while leaving 20% of people sort of out in the cold. I don't think its a good to drive an analogy between end product and tool(s). The main difference between them lies in the fact that tools are made for professionals, while end products are made for everyone. You don't have to graduate college to know how to use microwave, you just need to read a short instruction. Professionals who basing their choice on popularity are bad professionals, the good ones basing their choice on quality of tools. Because everyone knows that popularity has a temporary effect. Something which is popular today, will be forgotten tomorrow. That's just silly. Products vs Tools? A toaster is a device that I can use to toast bread. A coffee machine is a device i can use to make coffee. Professional people who create coffee or create toasted sandwiches for a living use different ones, but they're still coffee machines and toasters, and mostly they're just based around higher volume, and higher quality in terms of controls. Popularity doesn't always have a temporary effect. Consider the iPod. It's not forgotten is it? It's been popular for decades. Consider the personal computer! The laptop - this is a very popular device. It's been more than 2 decades
Re: Growth, Popularity and Languages - was Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
The argument about mass popularity is good if all you want to do is triumph in the consumer products business (c.f. many previous raps I've done about the anthropological human universals and how and why technological amplifiers for them have been and will be very popular). This is because marketeers are generally interested in what people *want* and desire to supply those wants and to get those wants to intersect with products. Educators are more interested in what people *need*, and many of these *needs* in my opinion are coextensive with human non-universals -- inventions (not genetic built-ins) such as reading and writing, modern scientific thinking and mathematics, deep historical perspectives, the law, equal rights, and many other rather difficult to learn and difficult to invent ideas. One of the most important points here is that becoming fluently skilled in a hard to learn area produces an odd -- but I think better -- kind of human ... one who has not just the inborn drives -- for example, revenge and vendetta are human universals -- but also has an overlay of other kinds of thinking that can in many cases moderate and sometimes head off impulses that might have been workable 200,000 years ago but are not good actions now. As far as can be ascertained, humans had been on the planet for almost 200,000 years before any of these were invented, and modern science was created only about 400 years ago. We are still trying to invent and teach and learn human rights. These are not only not obvious to our genetic brains, they are virtually invisible! A mass market place will have to be above high thresholds in knowledge before it can make good choices about these. Societies have always had to decide how to educate children into adults (though most have not been self-conscious about this). If ways could be found to make the learning of the really important stuff popular and wanted, then things are easier and simpler. But the dilemma is: what happens if this is the route and the children and adults reject it for the much more alluring human universals? Even if almost none of them lead to a stable, thriving, growth inducing and prosperous civilization? These are the issues I care about. If we look in the small at computing, and open it to a popular culture, we will get a few good things (as we do in pop music), but most of what is rich in most invented and developed areas will be not even seen, will not be learned, and a few things will be re-invented in much worse forms (reinventing the flat tire). This is partly because knowledge is generally more powerful than cleverness, and point of view is more powerful than either. I think education at the highest possible levels has always been the main issues for human beings, especially after the difficult to learn powerful inventions started to appear. For example, what was most important about writing was not that it could take down oral discourse, but that it led to new ways of thinking, arguing and discourse, and was one of the main underpinings of many other inventions. Similarly, what is important about computing is not that it can take down old media, useful as that is, or provide other conveniences through simple scripting, but that it constitutes a new and much more powerful way to think about, embody, argue and invent powerful ideas that can help us gain perspective on the dilemmas created by being humans who are amplified by technologies. If the legacy of the last several centuries is to automate the Pleistocene via catering to and supplying great power to human universals, then monumental disaster is not far off. As H.G. Wells pointed out We are in a race between Education and Catastrophe. It is hard to see that real education is ahead at this point. One of the great dilemmas of equal rights and other equalities is how to deal with the Tyranny of the Commons. The American Plan was to raise the commons to be able to participate in the same levels of conversations as the best thinkers. I think this is far from the situation at the current time. Much of this is quite invisible to any culture that is trying to get by and lacks systems and historical consciousness. The trivial take on computing today by both the consumers and most of the professionals would just be another pop music to wince at most of the time, if it weren't so important for how future thinking should be done. Best wishes, Alan ___ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
