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2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2016–2019
1:10:32 · 28K views · Dec 3, 2015
Alan Kay argues for rethinking how computer science is taught in schools, drawing on his work on object-oriented programming and GUIs. He discusses how poorly people understand complex systems and what education could do about it.
HN readers cite Kay's talks for his views on programming languages as user interfaces, thinking beyond logic, and why people struggle with complex systems.
4 comments from Hacker News
I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - [LINK] - this video Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context. The programming parts aren't ever the point, he's deeply interested in how as humans we improve our ability to collaboratively manage systems.
I tend to want to teach these people, point them to books and knowledge so they can learn and be less shallow. That is a sure way to piss almost all of them off (unless they become your students), which rarely happens. Alan Kay describes and analyses why the majority of humanity act like you describe in many of his lectures. He answers and explains most of your points. Its hard to recommend these talks, the good bits are spread around 50 lectures. I'll be happy to discuss with you which bits you'll like. A first suggestion is [1][2]. >I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge. I love to talk to such people also, so I search for them in the (scientific) crowd and befriend them so we can have those interesting conversations. Please contact me (morphle @ ziggo dot nl) and lets find out if we can have such a meaningful and satisfying exchange. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
Like many people, I think about this now and then, but I haven't done any work in that area. Ultimately, I picture a live environment, but not like Blueprint in UE4. I expect we'll end up with a predominantly interactive approach to programming, most likely visual drag-and-drop style programming, in a live environment that knows common patterns, data structures, algorithms; giving real-time advice, showing native code output as you go, etc. Basically, you're molding the system while monitoring it under various contexts, and you're programming against data models. Got a new Arduino board? Just drag and drop the data sheet model into your environment. It contains memory address information, read/write contexts, access protocols, contexts, etc for every component, and how they're connected. Now you design the rest of the logic. "A programming language is a user interface as much as it is any other thing. Why have multiple ones? They are all Turing equivalent."—Alan C. Kay (see the talk for the context of the quote; starts at around 23:25) "Rethinking CS Education | Alan Kay, CrossRoads 2015." this video "Most computer people went into computing because they were disturbed by other human beings."—Alan C. Kay
Well what is thinking about then? What was the mistake the greeks made? In this video[0] you said thinking is not about logic and that was the mistake the greeks made. [0] this video