Hi Tony
I like what the BOOM/BLOOM people are doing quite a bit. Their version of
"Datalog + Time" is definitely in accord with lots of our prejudices ...
Cheers,
Alan
>
> From: Tony Garnock-Jones
>To: Alan Kay
>Cc: Fundamentals of
jects should be able to
receive messages, but should not have to send to explicit receivers". This is a
kind of multi-cast I guess (but I think of it more like publish/subscribe).
Cheers,
Alan
>
> From: Tony Garnock-Jones
>To: Alan Kay ;
Hi Julian
I should probably comment on this, since it seems that the STEPS reports
haven't made it clear enough.
STEPS is a "science experiment" not an engineering project.
It is not at all about making and distributing an "operating system" etc., but
about trying to investigate the tradeoff
60s as POLs --
for Problem Oriented Languages) is why we took this approach.
Cheers,
Alan
>
> From: Loup Vaillant
>To: fonc@vpri.org
>Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 9:24 AM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Raspberry Pi
>
>Alan Kay wrote:
>&g
lan
>
> From: Loup Vaillant
>To: fonc@vpri.org
>Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2012 1:29 AM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Raspberry Pi
>
>Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote:
>> Alan Kay wrote:
>>> We have done very little of this so far, and very fe
Hi Jecel
In the "difference between research and engineering department" I think I would
first port a version of Smalltalk to this system.
One of the fun side-projects done in the early part of the Squeak system was
when John Maloney and a Berkeley grad student ported Squeak to "a luggage tag
Yes, Jack was a driving force and quite a character in so many ways.
Cheers,
Alan
>
> From: Long Nguyen
>To: fonc@vpri.org
>Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 9:47 AM
>Subject: [fonc] PARC founder Jacon Goldman dies at 90
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/
to be used).
Cheers,
Alan
>
> From: Casey Ransberger
>To: Alan Kay ; Fundamentals of New Computing
>
>Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 9:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] History of computing talks at SJSU
>
>Below.
>
>On Dec 16, 2011, at
m truly interacting
>with their massive datasets. They have to talk to project managers,
>who then talk to programmers, who then write code that gets deployed
>to QA, etc. The human social process here is fraught with error.
>
>On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Kim Ro
an 8K byte 1401!). I loved that little system. This led to the ST-72
"eval" really being a kind of cascaded "apply" ...
And there's no question that once
you aim at "real objects" a distributed "eval" makes great sense.
Cheers,
Alan
>_
>To: Dale Schumacher
>Cc: Programming Language Design ; The Friday Morning
>Applied Complexity Coffee Group ;
>"computational-actors-gu...@googlegroups.com"
>; Alan Kay ;
>Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Friday, November 25, 2011 12:11 PM
>Subject: RE: [CA
Yep.
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: David Barbour
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Wednesday, September 7, 2011 1:50 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Tension between meta-object protocol and encapsulation
>
>
>On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:48 PM, Casey Ransberger
>wrote
We've already discussed this in other contexts. This is what I meant when I
talked about "levels of meta" and why invoking a function is more benign than
using a global assignment (which is tantamount to redefining a function under
program control), etc.
And certainly to allow unprotected "re
I hate to be the one to bring this up, but this has always been a feature of
all the Smalltalks ... one has to ask, what is there about current general
practice that makes this at all remarkable? ...
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: Murat Girgin
>To: Fundamentals of Ne
_L.html?id=93gCOAAACAAJ
Cheers,
Alan
>____
>From: Alan Kay
>To: Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
>Cc: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Friday, September 2, 2011 8:23 AM
>Subject: Re: a little more FLEXibility (was: [fonc] Re: Ceres and Oberon)
>
>
o question that Bob Taylor was the prime key for PARC (and he also had
paid for most of our PhDs in the 60s when he was an ARPA funder).
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
>To: Alan Kay
>Cc: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Thursday,
I'm so glad I never read this before (and am looking for ways to forget that I
just did )
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: John Zabroski
>To: Alan Kay ; Fundamentals of New Computing
>
>Cc: Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
>Sent: Thursday, September 1,
plementation than I was).
Cheers,
Alan
>________
>From: Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
>To: Alan Kay ; Fundamentals of New Computing
>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 3:09 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Re: Ceres and Oberon
>
>Alan,
>
>thanks for the detailed history!
>
>> 1
ers,
Alan
>
>From: Eduardo Cavazos
>To: fonc@vpri.org
>Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 12:54 AM
>Subject: [fonc] Re: Ceres and Oberon
>
>Alan Kay wrote:
>
>> I'm glad that he has finally come to appreciate OOP.
>
>There are t
then.
Best wishes,
Alan
>________
>From: Eduardo Cavazos
>To: fonc@vpri.org
>Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 12:54 AM
>Subject: [fonc] Re: Ceres and Oberon
>
>Alan Kay wrote:
>
>> I'm glad that he has finally come to appreciate OOP
I'm glad that he has finally come to appreciate OOP.
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: Jakob Praher
>To: Alan Kay ; Fundamentals of New Computing
>
>Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 2:23 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Ceres and Oberon
>
>
>Am
Sure. He was invited to spend a year in CSL in the mid 70s and decided to do an
Alto like machine with an Alto-like UI and that ran Alto-like languages (turned
out to be an odd combination of Mesa and Smalltalk).
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: Jakob Praher
>To: Funda
(For example)
Try to imagine a system where the parts only receive messages but never
explicitly send them.
This is one example of what I meant when I requested that computer people pay
more attention to what is in between the parts, than to the parts -- the
Japanese have a great short word fo
Hi Sea
Well, I certainly don't know what I'm talking about after 50 years ...
Squeak and messaging
Squeak did not bring anything new to messaging. It was a 6 month project by 5
of us to simply make a framework for development -- so it was made from an
early version of Smalltalk-80 that Apple
ce ship, 3d printers, alien super brain race that had disappeared (the Krell), monsters from the ID.To me Lisp is like
something created by the Krell. "As though my ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell."I asked John if he had seen the movie and he had. John is &quo
One way to try to think about "the idea of Lisp" and the larger interesting
issues, is to read "the Advice Taker" paper by John McCarthy (ca. 56-58
"Programs With Common Sense") which is what got him thinking about interactive
intelligent agents, and got him to start thinking about creating a pr
Take a look at Landin's papers and especially ISWIM ("The next 700 programming
languages")
You don't so much want to learn Lisp as to learn "the idea of Lisp"
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: karl ramberg
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Wednesday, August 17,
I certainly wouldn't!
Cheers
Alan
>
>From: David Leibs
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 8:48 AM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Extending object oriented programming in Smalltalk
>
>
>
>
>On Aug 17, 2011, at 8:32 AM, Bert Freudenberg
ics and Types
>
>On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 03:43:04AM -0700, BGB wrote:
>> On 8/4/2011 6:19 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
>>
>> Here's the link to the paper
>> [1]http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2005001_learning.pdf
>>
>> inference:
>> it is no
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Thursday, August 4, 2011 10:33 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Physics and Types
>
>Oh awesome! Thank you both. That's got to be one of the single most
>profound uses of computers I've ever run across.
>
>Warm regards,
>~Simon
Here's the link to the paper
http://www.vpri.org/pdf/rn2005001_learning.pdf
Cheers,
Alan
>
>From: Martin McClure
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing
>Sent: Thursday, August 4, 2011 3:46 PM
>Subject: Re: [fonc] Physics and Types
>
>On 08/03/2011 08:10 PM, Simo
Check out David Reed's 1978 MIT thesis "NetOs" about just such issues.
Cheers,
Alan
From: David Barbour
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Wed, July 27, 2011 12:54:48 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Physics and Types
Very nice survey, Chris. Thank you for it.
chine Editor
On 7/30/2011 8:32 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
By the way, a wonderful example of the "QWERTY phenomenon" is that
both the Greeks and the Romans actually did calculations with an
on-table or on-the-ground abacus that did have a zero (the term for
the small
t of conventions for writing numbers
down.
(One can imagine the different temperaments involved in the odd arrangement
above -- which is very much many such odd arrangements around us in the world
today ...)
Cheers,
Alan
From: K. K. Subramaniam
To: fonc@vpri.or
lan,
Le 25 juil. 2011 à 10:08, Alan Kay a écrit :
> I don't know of an another attempt to build a whole system with wide
> properties
>in DSLs. But it wouldn't surprise me if there were some others around. It
>requires more design effort, and the tools to make languages nee
I checked a little more, and the Fox book you mention is indeed the one on
Barton's list.
Cheers,
Alan
From: Alan Kay
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Tue, July 26, 2011 8:07:46 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Re: [squeak-dev] [ANN] Alan Kay to talk
Cheers,
Alan
From: John Zabroski
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Tue, July 26, 2011 7:48:59 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Re: [squeak-dev] [ANN] Alan Kay to talk about "Next steps
for qualitatively improving programming" at HPI in Potsdam
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 5:37 AM, Alan Kay
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
Good points, and I agree with most if not all of them.
Cheers,
Alan
From: John Zabroski
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Mon, July 25, 2011 5:17:02 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] HotDraw's Tool State Machine Editor
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 4:08 AM,
, July 25, 2011 1:59:03 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On 07/25/2011 09:35 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
> I did ask in that thread about exposing the CPU, a la NativeClient. (It's a
>usenet group so you can post without subscribing, nice)
>
> Short answer is that
e whole machine -- despite this being the goal of good
OS
design since the mid-60s.
Cheers,
Alan
From: David Barbour
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Mon, July 25, 2011 12:59:16 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 a
I think this is the big problem -- the various "theys" over the years "don't
see
the need for it"
From: Bert Freudenberg
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Mon, July 25, 2011 12:35:33 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay ta
at this point.
Best wishes,
Alan
From: David Barbour
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Mon, July 25, 2011 12:29:06 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
The main idea here is th
y and
computer-augmented management-system research (Final Report),
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/sri/arc/Development_of_a_Multidisplay_Time-Shared_Computer_Facility_Apr68.pdf
On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 11:39 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
> The idea of using a grammar to create a user interface goes back at least as
> far as
h computations completely
safely! Yikes! Where are we? In some Danteish "9th Circle of Fumbling"?
Cheers,
Alan
________
From: Thiago Silva
To: Alan Kay ; Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Sun, July 24, 2011 1:41:33 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk a
.
As Kurt Vonnegut used to say "And so it goes".
Cheers,
Alan
____
From: Marcel Weiher
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Cc: Alan Kay
Sent: Sun, July 24, 2011 5:39:26 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
Hi Alan,
as usual, it was
school).
I hope this will serve for now
Cheers,
Alan
From: Christopher Bratlien
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Cc: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Sun, July 24, 2011 1:59:02 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Re: [squeak-dev] [ANN] Alan Kay to talk about "
The idea of using a grammar to create a user interface goes back at least as
far
as Engelbart's AHI group. They used a distant past cousin of OMeta (called Tree
Meta) to do this. Ca. 1966.
One of the first systems to specify and make graphical grammars (and UIs) via
user interactions was Willi
Hi Brad,
The Nile language of Dan Amelang -- which STEPS uses for graphics -- should be
both powerful and revealing to students for making acoustic models and
processes
of many kinds. We haven't gotten around to playing with sound om Nile yet.
Thanks to Alex Warth and Bert Freudenberg, there i
, 2011 11:27:12 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Re: [squeak-dev] [ANN] Alan Kay to talk about "Next steps
for qualitatively improving programming" at HPI in Potsdam
Am 23.07.2011 04:47, schrieb Juan Vuletich:
> Casey Ransberger wrote:
>> I did this dance too... Hmm... Seems the Mac instal
ting
Sent: Thu, July 21, 2011 5:47:15 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alan Kay talk at HPI in Potsdam
Ian,
When will the recording be online?
Please let us know!
Thanks,
Z-Bo
On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:32 PM, Ian Piumarta wrote:
Title: Next steps for qualitatively improving programming
>
>Venue
What the one-celled microbes said before the Cambrian ...
From: karl ramberg
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Sun, July 17, 2011 11:31:11 AM
Subject: [fonc] Last programming language
Hi
Here is a interesting video about programming languages
http://s
Thanks for the references to The Chemoton Theory -- I hadn't seen this before.
But I didn't understand your reference to Bergson -- wasn't he an adherent of
the Elan Vital as a necessary part of "what is life?" and that also drove
evolution in particular directions.
Cheers,
Alan
Hi Chris
I think looking at the way biology works is a good perspective. By the way, we
recycle not just the 10 trillion cells that contain our DNA (and the 90
Trillion
cells we have with microbial DNA/RNA), but all our *atoms* are replaced about
every 7 years (with the exception of inorganic
Great subject and looks very interesting!
Cheers,
Alan
From: C. Scott Ananian
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Wed, June 15, 2011 2:44:56 PM
Subject: [fonc] Narrative Interfaces
We're having some invited talks this Friday at One Laptop per Child's
of
It would be great if everyone on this list would think deeply about how to have
an "eternal" system, and only be amplified by it.
For example, take a look at Alex Warth's "Worlds" work (and paper) and see how
that might be used to deal with larger problems of consistency and version
control in
'm
guessing, would represent a big step forward.
Thanks,
Alexis
On 5 June 2011 01:33, Alan Kay wrote:
I like Maude (and most of the stuff done by or influenced by Joe Goguen).
However, it is basically a term rewriting system that can overlap a bit with
equational semantics. Nothing wro
rogramming languages. However, I don't think this is
necessary, but more an artifact of incomplete design.
Cheers,
Alan
From: K. K. Subramaniam
To: Alan Kay
Cc: fonc@vpri.org
Sent: Mon, June 6, 2011 10:29:49 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] languages
Alan,
Thanks for
Hi Subbu
Check out when Jules Schwartz actual did Jovial. And the acronym was actually
"Jules' Own Version of the International Algebraic Language"
Cheers,
Alan
From: K. K. Subramaniam
To: fonc@vpri.org
Cc: Alan Kay
Sent: Mon, June 6,
lly good techniques for
making APL efficient colorfully named "beating" and "drag-along".
-djl
On Jun 5, 2011, at 7:50 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
I think this one was derived from Phil Abrams' Stanford (and SLAC) PhD thesis
on
dynamic analysis and optimization of APL -- a ve
ery eye opening.
-david
On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi David
>
>I've always been very fond of APL also -- and a slightly better and more
>readable syntax could be devised these days now that things don't have to be
>squeezed onto a
Hi David
I've always been very fond of APL also -- and a slightly better and more
readable syntax could be devised these days now that things don't have to be
squeezed onto an IBM Selectric golfball ...
Cheers,
Alan
From: David Leibs
To: Fundamentals of Ne
ich models the world. Numbers would be in that
category, they "deserve" to be treated specially. In the same vein, I think
mathematical operators "deserve" special treatment, and not just from an under
the covers, optimization point of view.
Thank you,
Florin
__
a binary selector character.
Best,
Florin
____
From: Alan Kay
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Sat, June 4, 2011 2:46:33 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] languages
Smalltalk was certainly not the first attempt -- and -- the most versatile
Smalltalk in this area w
ep it
simple stupid) applies and static typing certainly helps on the debugging side!
Bootstrapping really isn't a problem - Bluebottle is working proof of this.
On 4 June 2011 16:08, Alan Kay wrote:
This issues were in conversations in the mid-60s when I was in grad school.
>
&g
Smalltalk was certainly not the first attempt -- and -- the most versatile
Smalltalk in this area was the first Smalltalk and also the smallest.
I personally think expressibility is not just semantic, but also syntactic.
Many
different styles of programming have been realized in Lisp, but "man
This issues were in conversations in the mid-60s when I was in grad school.
One difference was that there was a computer (and more being thought of) -- the
Burroughs B5000 -- that removed one of the motivations for static typing -- it
implemented byte codes and 0 overhead dynamic type checking i
011 8:47:39 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Alternative Web programming models?
Didn't this debate happen with windowing systems (eg X vs NeWS, dumb vs smart
windows-server).
David
On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi Cornelius
>
>There are lots of egregiously wrong thin
eone to take the same approach to
networked-based application as Gezira did with graphics (or the STEP project in
general) as far assessing what's needed in a modern Internet-scale hypermedia
architecture.
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Merik Voswinkel wrote:
Dr Alan Kay addresse
The main features of the Alto were a terrific combination of speed, parsimony,
and architecture.
-- Speed came from bipolar transistors. It had a 150ns microinstruction time.
-- Parsimony allowed these to be economic enough for a 1972 personal
computer/workstation (we eventually built almost 2000
Ian, as an excellent musician, is making the big important point here ... that
musical time is not about integer ratios.
It is often wrongly taught that way, but it is actually about "meaning",
"pulse", "emphasis", and "phrasing".
Musical notation is not a program to be followed literally, but
n about OMeta
On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
The larger problems will require something like "negotiation" between modules
(this idea goes back to some of the agent ideas at PARC, and was partially
catalyzed by the AM and Eurisko work by Doug Lenat).
>
Separat
Computing ; jamie.dougl...@boeing.com
Sent: Mon, April 11, 2011 8:21:06 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] Question about OMeta
On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 12:09 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
But now you are adding some side conditions :)
>
>For example, if you want comparable or even better abstractions in the target
P. S. I was presuming that people on this list are reading FONC related stuff
on
the VPRI writings page ...
But just in case, please check out a few of Ian's recent papers on minimal
direct to machine code schemes.
Cheers,
Alan
From: Alan Ka
These approaches are always fun to look at.
A good question here is whether this many-level scheme is better than to pick
something like a simple Lisp-like or OMeta-like language (e.g. it came from
Meta
II, which is really simple) that can output machine code and simply hand
translate the firs
Hi Craig
"Frank" is the first rough assembly of some of the STEPS projects. It is
mentioned in the 2010 Report to NSF
Cheers,
Alan
From: Craig Latta
To: fonc@vpri.org
Sent: Sat, April 9, 2011 6:33:11 AM
Subject: [fonc] Frank
If there's something abou
bvious that that doesn't work.
You guys rock :) I just wanna take this opportunity to give thanks that there
are still people like you who are continuing this sort of things for the good
of
us all.
Julian.
On 09/04/2011, at 7:46 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
It does that all the time. An easy way t
;m also a sucker for shiny new technology like OMeta, so
I
picture gobs of fun.)
Fortunately I have some of the best people in the world hard at work on burning
my disk packs! Thanks VPRI:) Can't wait to dig into Frank and see what's there.
Huge fan of HyperCard, so I'm reall
It does that all the time. An easy way to do it is to make up a universal
semantics, perhaps in AST form, then write translators into and out of.
Cheers,
Alan
From: Julian Leviston
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Fri, April 8, 2011 7:24:28 AM
Subjec
like variables...
That one simple thing makes them so much more awesome.
Julian.
On 08/04/2011, at 10:55 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi John
>
>I don't think I would call the Analyst "visual programming". (And you are
>right
>that to this day most people can't see what a sp
Hi John
I don't think I would call the Analyst "visual programming". (And you are right
that to this day most people can't see what a spreadsheet really is (or is
"trying to be"). I think the real interest of the Analyst was that it was early
and good thinking about what easily programmable "vi
I think he means "The Analyst" that was done at Xerox PARC and XEOS for the CIA
Cheers,
Alan
From: Kim Rose
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Wed, March 30, 2011 3:02:11 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] visual environments created by present/former VPRI staff
H
mantics. So this particular approach to quasi-Horn logic is relatively simple
and quite pretty in a dynamic language.
Cheers,
Alan
____
From: Duncan Mak
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Cc: Alan Kay
Sent: Wed, March 30, 2011 9:46:20 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] vis
It is worth a mention, but it was not done by Viewpoints folks in current or
previous incarnations
Cheers,
Alan
From: John Nilsson
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Wed, March 30, 2011 10:10:32 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] visual environments created b
There are several books on various kinds of visual programming.
A lot of this territory was explored in the ARPA-IPTO research community in the
60s.
Sketchpad (used the idea of "fusing" visual constraints to the Sketchpad
drawings)
Online Graphical Procedures (an early graphical dataflow system
It is indeed a reference to "human universals". These are traits and "drives"
found in every culture, and originally were identified in the 3000 or so
traditional cultures studied by Anthropologists.
For example, every culture examined has a language, stories, kinship, status
and
power, a "c
I love this!
Cheers,
Alan
From: Casey Ransberger
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 10:51:12 AM
Subject: [fonc] Visual 6502
This is kind of cool. They took a 6502, X-rayed it, vectorized the photographs,
and then used polygon int
A nice Goethe quote: "We should all share in the excitement of discovery
without
vain attempts to claim priority".
So we can be happy that Chuck Moore did a few things when he did, without
worrying about when the ideas first appeared. Computing -- like natural science
-- has always been ripe f
Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Mon, January 3, 2011 2:59:51 PM
Subject: Re: [fonc] The Elements of Computing Systems
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Please say more ...
>
>The Alto didn't have any hardware for this ... nor did it have any regular
>code
>... i
2011 at 12:06 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
>
>The Alto did not have a lot of transistors in it, but was a very fine
>meta-machine, so one might think about how to posit an even simpler Alto, but
>that would still have its meta-capabilities. The Mead-Conway "regular
>architectures
ime, I don't have such high
standards, since I don't have enough material to compare to.)
I had not heard of Carver Mead's book before. I just picked it up via an
online
used books store. Thanks.
On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:05 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi Eric (and all)
>
>I r
Hi Eric (and all)
I read this a few years ago and I really wanted to like this book much more
than
I did.
I love the basic idea behind it. And I think a really good rendering of the
"from atoms to life" chain of meaning in computing would help many people,
especially students.
However, it
Hi Casey,
We still have a lot of work to do before we have a kernel of stuff that we'll
be
happy to answer questions about. Frank is still in intensive care, but we are
working to get him off his respirator and heart machine!
Cheers,
Alan
From: Casey Ransb
un, Nov 21, 2010 at 04:55:45PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
>Hi Casey,
>
>You might enjoy looking at "operational semantics" -- whose idea has been
>around longer than the term. There is also "denotational semantics", which
>goes back to Christopher
Hi Casey,
You might enjoy looking at "operational semantics" -- whose idea has been
around
longer than the term. There is also "denotational semantics", which goes back
to
Christopher Strachey in the 60s.
The latter is more amenable to automated reasoning processes, and the former is
more a
ternal purpose. The whole interface
would thus be a plain set of attribute data, on one hand, and a few actions
directly launchable by the controller only on the other.
In other words, the controller is the (only) messaging system.
I recently read an often quoted post by Alan Kay using the word "
I think this is the real point here, and you put it well.
One of the books I've admired greatly over the years is "The Molecular Biology
of The Cell" -- especially the "green one" (3rd edition?) -- which does a
terrific job of starting with a few findings of chemistry and spinning out a
pretty
so that is why I made the joke about printing Maxwell's
Equations for Computer Science on a t-shirt.
[1] http://media.cs.uiuc.edu/seminars/StateFarm-Kay-2009-10-22a.asx
[2] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3265#comment-48129
[3] http://toddsatogata.net/
On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 1:44 PM, Ala
One of my all time favorite metaphors and examples for part of what we are
trying to do in this "T-shirt programming" project.
Cheers,
Alan
From: David Leibs
To: Fundamentals of New Computing
Sent: Fri, July 9, 2010 10:33:04 AM
Subject: Re: [fonc] goals
Once a project gets going it usually winds up with a few more goals than those
that got it started -- partly because the individual researchers bring their
own
perspectives to the mix.
But the original goals of STEPS were pretty simple and longstanding. They came
from thinking that the size of
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