Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

We asked Alan to do an AMA a while ago and he said yes, but having him show up to comment on the topic of a given thread is in a way even better. I thought those comments were pure gold. If you missed them, take a look.

Alan and his group joining YC is the most mind-blowing thing to happen (for me) since I started working on HN. No one has influenced me more in thinking about computing, and his tireless work in talking about computing history (especially the work and culture around ARPA) is a true service. Watching his talks seems to be the only easy place to get that information, and when you start doing it it's like one of those dreams where you enter into a wing of your house that you didn't know existed.

Edit: One of my dreams for HN is for this community to become active in recovering, learning, and extending the computing culture that Alan talks about, which is so much more satisfying than the morass of complexity we mostly find ourselves bogged down in.

> it's like one of those dreams where you enter into a wing of your house that you didn't know existed.

Wait. How common is this?

(I've had these dreams semi-frequently over the last 3 years, but no one else I've told about them has volunteered that they've had any similar experience.)

I have them fairly often. I think it's an interesting metaphor for life too -- how many parts of ourselves have we simply forgotten about?

The dreams must be incremental. For example, for me, dreaming about a house so big it has 'wings' is a latter-stage dream.

I'm still fantasizing about the German doors from the other HN thread this week.

Please know that your collaborations with Alan are appreciated. :-)

even better

I tend to agree. The AMA format doesn't really allow for the kind of depth that Kay's top level answer to the OOP question has...

...or the same context for digesting it. I came across it when it was a day old and wondered about McCarthy's Temporal Logic and when Google didn't turn anything up I thought about requesting a link, but the asynchronous format led me to forgo the low value inquiry and I wound up spending enough time to figure out enough to temporarily sate my curiosity instead of checking likes on the Facebook.

This is awesome. Thanks for putting them all together!

Could it be that culture chooses to exists offline and out of the boundaries of HN?

Quite likely, though we may also be talking about different cultures? The one that Alan Kay mostly discusses in his talks is the ARPA culture of the 1960s, which bore fruit in the creation of the Internet and personal computing. The reason that culture exists out of the boundaries of HN is probably generational—most of its surviving members are either retired (though as Kay says, "still vital") or don't spend time on internet forums. It would be a huuuuge benefit to all of us if we could figure out a way to either get more of them onto HN or at least to make more of their work and experience accessible here.

Good points. I certainly see HN as something too business focused (understandable given its roots as Startup News). For example, the community around Hackaday seems to be more to what the past generation had (personal opinion). Computer/Internet culture without hardware is missing a fairly big part. Hardware in HN is not common. There are golden bits here are be there but it does not seem to be part of the core subjects. Still, the value in this community comes from its business driven attitude. A sort of hacker 2.0 if you will. Where money is also important and a motivator. I still enjoy the place and feel it has blossomed into an unique mix of views. That itself means there is an HN culture. Not like the one you mention but borrowing from it.

There are comparatively few hardware stories posted. And when you do post something hardware related, you'll have a better chance of exposure on HN; load up some keywords like IoT, Raspberry Pi, etc., and you'll see what I mean :)

Yes,that seems to be correct. I do wish the business talk would die a little so other stuff would blossom. This forum makes people money so its actively gamed. Though that might be in sync with its origins. Dunno, just an old fart speaking.

It's a good thing on HN that when "old farts" a.k.a. elders speak, the community tends to listen.

The differing subcommunities here have divergent opinions about what the front page should consist of. For example, we hear laments from other corners that the amount of business stuff has gone down (where you might think it has gone up, or at least stayed too high).

The obvious 'solution' would be to factor this site into silos, subreddit-style, but we're not going to do that, even though a non-siloed front page is guaranteed to be optimal for nobody. By far the best way to influence it is to post stuff of the kind you personally consider highly interesting. And if it doesn't get noticed, fire us an email (hn@ycombinator.com) because we've built systems to give exceptionally good stuff multiple cracks at the bat here.

Is there a public policy that defines how many new items may be posted at once?

The closest to that is in the site guidelines: "Please don't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated by your submissions."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you. I read that but was still a bit unsure. :)

I was actually on my way over to comment that I enjoyed his impromptu AMA on books at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803165.

Oh that should definitely be on the list! I'll ask Craig (current editor of the Macro) to add it. Edit: added.

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