> it turns into typical "architecture astronaut" naval gazing
I take exception to your critique of your Mr Victor's presentation. I am sad to see that your wall of text has reached the top of this discussion on HN. To be honest, it's probably because no one has the time to wade through all of the logical fallacies, especially the ad hominem attacks and needlessly inflammatory language ("falls very short," "architecture astronaut naval gazing," "untried methods," "frankly childish, and unhelpful,"trite," "not practical," etc)
You seem to be reacting just like the "absolute binary programmers" that Bret predicts. As far as I can gather, you are fond of existing web programming tools (HTML, CSS, JS, etc) and took Bret's criticism as some sort of personal insult (I guess you like making websites).
I think that Bret's talk is about freeing your mind from thinking that the status quo of programming methodologies is the final say on the matter, and he points out that alternative methodologies (especially more human-centric and visual methodologies) are a neglected research area that was once more fruitful in Computer Science's formative years.
Bret's observations in this particular presentation are valid and insightful in their own right. His presentation style is also creative and enjoyable. Nothing in this presentation deserves the type of language that you invoke, especially in light of the rest Bret's recent works (http://worrydream.com/) that are neatly summed up by this latest presentation.
I'm not surprised at the language; it's war, after all. Bret and Alan Kay and others are saying, "We in this industry are pathetic and not even marginally professional." It's hard to hear and invokes sometimes an emotional response.
And what makes it hard to hear is that we know deep in our hearts, that's it's true, and as an industry, we're not really trying all that hard. It used to be Computer Science; now it's Computer Pop.
Bret and Alan Kay and others are saying, "We in this industry are pathetic and not even marginally professional." It's hard to hear and invokes sometimes an emotional response.
It sounds like sour grapes to me. Everyone else is pathetic and unprofessional because they didn't fall in love with our language and practices.
Indeed, they didn't. And it likely cost the world trillions (I'm being conservative, here). The sour grapes are justified here. To give a few examples:
In the sixties, people were able to build interactive systems with virtually no delay. Nowadays we have computers that are millions times faster, yet still lag. Seriously, more than 30 seconds just to turn on the damn computer? My father's Atari ST wast faster than my brand new computer in this respect.
Right now, we use the wrong programming languages for many projects, often multiplying code size by at least 2 to 5. I know learning a new language takes time, but if you know only 2 languages and one paradigm, either you're pathetic, or your teachers are.
>In the sixties, people were able to build interactive systems with virtually no delay.
That did virtually nothing. It is easy to be fast when you do nothing.
>I know learning a new language takes time, but if you know only 2 languages and one paradigm, either you're pathetic, or your teachers are.
X86 still dominates the desktop.
Wow, so CS is all about what hardware you buy and what languages you program in? I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on what CS is. While programming languages are part of CS, what language you chose to write an app in really is not.
> > In the sixties, people were able to build interactive systems with virtually no delay.
> That did virtually nothing. It is easy to be fast when you do nothing.
This is kind of the point. Current interactive systems tend to do lots of useless things, most of which are not perceptible (except for the delays they cause)
> Wow, so CS is all about what hardware you buy and what languages you program in?
No. Computer Science is about assessing the qualities of current programming tools, and inventing better ones. Without forgetting humans warts and limitations of course.
On the other hand, programming (solving problems with computers), is about choosing hardware and languages (among other things). You wouldn't your project to cost 5 times more than it could just because you've chosen the wrong tools.
You wouldn't your project to cost 5 times more than it could just because you've chosen the wrong tools.
Yep, If there were really tools out there that could beat what is in current use by a factor of 5 then they would have won, and once they exist they will win. Because they would have had the time to A) Implement something better. B) Use all that extra time to build an easy migration path so that those on the lesser platform could migrate over.
So where is the processor that is 5x better than x86? Where is the language that is 5x better than C, C++, Java, C#,(whatever you consider to be the best of the worse to be.) I would love to use a truly better tool, I would love to use a processor so blazingly fast that it singed my eyebrows.
This is kind of the point. Current interactive systems tend to do lots of useless things, most of which are not perceptible (except for the delays they cause)
Right because all of us sitting around with our 1/5x tools have time to bang out imperceptible features.
I take exception to your critique of your Mr Victor's presentation. I am sad to see that your wall of text has reached the top of this discussion on HN. To be honest, it's probably because no one has the time to wade through all of the logical fallacies, especially the ad hominem attacks and needlessly inflammatory language ("falls very short," "architecture astronaut naval gazing," "untried methods," "frankly childish, and unhelpful,"trite," "not practical," etc)
You seem to be reacting just like the "absolute binary programmers" that Bret predicts. As far as I can gather, you are fond of existing web programming tools (HTML, CSS, JS, etc) and took Bret's criticism as some sort of personal insult (I guess you like making websites).
I think that Bret's talk is about freeing your mind from thinking that the status quo of programming methodologies is the final say on the matter, and he points out that alternative methodologies (especially more human-centric and visual methodologies) are a neglected research area that was once more fruitful in Computer Science's formative years.
Bret's observations in this particular presentation are valid and insightful in their own right. His presentation style is also creative and enjoyable. Nothing in this presentation deserves the type of language that you invoke, especially in light of the rest Bret's recent works (http://worrydream.com/) that are neatly summed up by this latest presentation.