Alan Kay's new project

[Mark Haniford]

On 2/11/07, Brian Rice <water at tunes.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 8, 2007, at 8:37 PM, Mark Haniford wrote:
>
> > I'm wondering what people's thoughts are regarding Alan Kay's new
> > project.  http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/070214.html
>
> I'm aware of it. I wouldn't call it Alan Kay's project. It's Ian
> Piumarta's, and he's lucky enough to be one of the people that Alan
> Kay will listen to.



Alan Kay is the name recognition behind the proposal that got the NSF
funding.  But yeah, ALBERT wouldn't be Alan Kay's baby.


>
> Eh, perhaps. The whole thing looks very quirky and Ian-centric to me,
> and he has a long history of not finishing what he starts.


 I don't know what quirky and Ian-centric means, but Slate never got
finished either...
But at least they have funding, which means there's a high likelyhood that
something will be produced, unlike some sourceforge crap.

I'm still
> in wait-and-see mode, personally. Also, don't forget that research
> projects have absolutely no commitment to be useful or forthcoming to
> other open-source hackers, so don't take it for granted that we can
> just join in on the fun


It was my understanding that the system would be somewhat language
agnostic.  Now whether it is useful for Slate or not is another matter, but
I don't know why you would think that anybody thinks that research projects
have some kind of obligation to open source hackers.


- after all, Squeak was "open-source" for 6
> years before there was a community not directly attached to Alan that
> had *any* say over its direction.


If it's open source then anybody has much say  over the code as they want.
I'm not sure what you're getting  at, besides maybe some  grudge against
Alan Kay.

I'd prefer a situation where we can take the lessons from there and
> morph Slate along those lines (and hopefully even re-use some code),
> and as I've stated before, I don't care how much Slate has to change
> if it means that the idea succeeds.


Agreed, and that's why I posted, so that any code that can be leveraged in
order to implement the ideas of Slate can be looked at.


Coke/Pepsi also seem very single-dispatch-centric, for the record.


Yeah I know, it's limiting.  I'm off to hack some Dylan code.

--
> -Brian
> http://briantrice.com
>
>
>
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