Mariano Guerra 2021-12-28 13:51:11
🐦 Dan Luu: In general, I don't think it's very interesting when someone spends a lot of time talking about how much better the world would be if we all listened to them when they don't discuss specific details about what mechanisms would make things better and why. https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1474111409365655559
🐦 Hillel: Vision and speculation are great, but Kay often criticizes modern computing for not matching his vision. But maybe it's his vision that was off? Maybe kids would never have used a Dynabook the way he imagined they'd use it
dnmfarrell 2021-12-28 20:09:06 Kay once attributed the slowdown in computers to a Butler Lampson quote, something like operating systems have gotten 5000x slower, largely negating hardware gains. But I could never find the source for it. That claim does seem plausible to me; my laptop (seems to) take as long to boot now as my desktop did 20 years ago. Maybe I'll buy Dan's patreon to get the details.
Eric Gade 2021-12-30 16:33:49 The problem is that we don’t have the conceptual framework for evaluating whether or not this is the case
Eric Gade 2021-12-30 16:34:44 His vision is so tied to the concept of conventional literacy and its effects that you’d have to be able to say something concrete about what conventional literacy actually is (and therefore what “literacy-like” technologies are, if anything)
Eric Gade 2021-12-30 16:35:19 It turns out that’s really difficult. Empirically, Scriber and Cole were the only ones to take a shot at it and it was a mixed bag. There hasn’t been much work on the psychology part of it since the 70s as far as I know
Mariano Guerra 2021-12-29 18:11:33 Before you go off inventing new programming languages, please ask yourself these questions:
- What problem does this language solve? How can I make it precise?
- How can I show it solves this problem? How can I make it precise?
- Is there another solution? Do other languages solve this problem? How? What are the advantages of my solution? of their solution? What are the disadvantages of my solution? of their solution?
- How can I show that my solution cannot be expressed in some other language? That is, what is the unique property of my language which is lacking in others which enables a solution?
- What parts of my language are essential to that unique property?
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/687#comment-18074
Duncan Cragg 2021-12-30 17:36:49 Well, these are all excellent points, and that's an interesting post on LtU.
But I think that, since 99.9% of new languages won't succeed, you may as well just follow your heart anyway, and have fun doing what feels good to you.
William Taysom 2021-12-31 15:58:52 Even better if you read it as "before you share the new programming language you've invented" because those are the questions that others will immediately ask. Might as well be prepared.
Christopher Galtenberg 2021-12-29 18:52:32 Shubhadeep Roychowdhury 2021-12-30 13:07:17 Ivan Reese 2021-12-30 17:34:08 ⚠
Reminder for folks posting to this channel — please include an excerpt or summary of your link in the text of your message. Don't rely on the Slack-generated previews, as they're typically low-quality, occasionally totally irrelevant, inaccessible for folks using the history search (and perhaps non-standard clients), and (thus) very likely to be removed.
If you've posted here recently (this week), feel free to edit your message to include a summary or excerpt.
