Here are two great lectures given by Alan Kay at Y Combinator's Sta...
Alan Kay is an American computer scientist, who was a pioneer in ob...
> ***"Computers are to computing as instruments are to music. Softw...
**Architecture dominates the material.** Architecture is the art of...
If you are curious and want to learn more about Alan Turing's views...
The Turing tar-pit refers to programming languages that allow for f...
**WYSIWYG** is an interface that abstracts certain tasks from the u...
This is basically the concept of ["Customer driven development"](ht...
> ***"Computers were stubborn. They insisted on doing what was said...
> ***"Natural scientists are given a universe and seek to discover ...
The author advocates for simplicity in the design of computer softw...
**Object-oriented programming (OOP)** is a programming paradigm bas...
The author believes that the limitations of software architecture a...
VisiCalc (visible calculator) was the first killer app of the compu...
> ***"Does this mean that what might be called a driver-education a...
The author considers the construction of mentality with a machine a...
The author states that the computer can act like a machine with a c...
The author advocates for early immersion of kids in computing. Like...
© 1984 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
© 1984 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
The Turing tar-pit refers to programming languages that allow for flexibility in function but are difficult to learn and use for common/simple tasks. This expression was extracted from [Epigrams on Programming by Alan J. Perlis](http://pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html):
***"54. Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy.***
**Object-oriented programming (OOP)** is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects" which may contain:
- data, as attributes
- code, as methods.
A feature of objects is that an object's methods can access and often modify the attributes of the object with which they are associated with. Significant object-oriented languages include Java, C++, Python and many more.
> ***"Computers were stubborn. They insisted on doing what was said rather than what the programmer meant."***
The author advocates for simplicity in the design of computer software and employe the Occam's Razor heuristic which states that simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones.
> ***"Natural scientists are given a universe and seek to discover its laws. Computer scientists make laws in the form of programs and the computer bring a new universe to life."***
VisiCalc (visible calculator) was the first killer app of the computer era. VisiCalc went on sale in November of 1979 (it cost $100) and became such a big hit that many dealers started bundling the Apple II with VisiCalc.
Learn more here: [VisiCalc of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston
](https://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Software/Visicalc.html)
> ***"Does this mean that what might be called a driver-education approach to computer literacy is all most people will ever need-that one need only learn how to 'drive' the applications programs and need never learn to program? Certainly not. Users must be able to tailer a system to their wants."***
The author believes that the limitations of software architecture and its capabilities are not due to limitations of the medium, i.e. the machine, but rather these software limitations will be due to the programmer and the users.
If you are curious and want to learn more about Alan Turing's views on Artificial Intelligence you can find an interesting paper here:
[A. Turing - Intelligent Machinery a Heretical Theory](https://fermatslibrary.com/s/intelligent-machinery-a-heretical-theory)
The author states that the computer can act like a machine with a clearly defined purpose or it can act and like a language so that it can be shaped and used in many different forms. It can act as a simple tool but it is much more than a tool since it can act like many other tools.
This is basically the concept of ["Customer driven development"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design) or if you like lean/agile methodologies.
> ***"Computers are to computing as instruments are to music. Software is the score whose interpretations amplifies our reach and lifts our spirits Leonardo da Vinci called music the shaping of the invisible, and his phrase is even more apt as a description of software."***
Alan Kay is an American computer scientist, who was a pioneer in object-oriented programming and the now ubiquitous overlapping-window interface.
He was one of the founders of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) hich originated many of the concepts now common in personal computing.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society of Arts. He has won the ACM Turing Award (2003) and the Kyoto Prize (2004).
> ***"The best way to predict the future is to invent it"*** - Alan Kay
Here are two great lectures given by Alan Kay at Y Combinator's Startup School.
Lecture 1: "How to Invent the Future I"
[](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/11)
And lecture 2 "How to Invent the Future II"
[](https://www.startupschool.org/videos/12)
The author advocates for early immersion of kids in computing. Like reading and writing, it will be necessary to be literate in computing. Being fluent and able to enjoy computing will open a variety of new windows of exploration that will help society grow as a whole.
The author considers the construction of mentality with a machine and gives an analogy with biology, atoms that give rise to mental competence. He believes that this task is a very difficult but not impossible.
He states that the first step towards mentality will be through techniques that will be able to learn competence and will be in fact useful even before they present any kind of "mentality" - this is very much like what we see today with recent development's in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
**WYSIWYG** is an interface that abstracts certain tasks from the user in order to facilitate what A. Kay calls what "user illusion". The users view and create documents in a user interface (with windows, menus, and a click icon) such that the end result is very similar to the document being created. The user can manipulate the layout of the document and without having to type any commands. It is the difference between a word document and a Markdown or LaTeX document.
Below you can find an example, on the left you see markdown code as compared to the final result on the right. In a WYSIWYG interface the user would work directly on the right panel and would without having the need to type the markdown commands.
**Architecture dominates the material.** Architecture is the art of informing and shaping a material with meaning and then being able to extract meaning from the new form.
For example:
- Shaping clay into a mug
- Assembling rocks to build a cathedral
- Combining words into poems
There is a difference between the computer and the materials cited above. The computer can read, write, calculate and follow complex instructions. The limits of what can be accomplished with complex computing architecture (software) are still not very well understood.
> the task for someone who wants to understand software is not simply to see the pot instead of the clay. It is to see in pots thrown by beginners […] the possibility of Chinese porcelain and Limoges to come.