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Comment by cocktailpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

I have total respect for Alan Kay but I hope he stops criticizing other people and actually shows his vision through his own execution (and by execution I don't just mean invention of a prototype but actual productization and distribution)

If you're building something visionary and are not the one who's making tons of money off of it, you have two solutions:

1. IF you're interested in making money: Try to figure out what you're doing wrong and fix it so you actually CAN capitalize on your original invention

2. IF you're NOT interested in making money: Enjoy the respect these people pay you and please don't badmouth others who worked hard to build important products that changed the world.

I feel like Alan Kay is on the second boat, so my heart breaks whenever he badmouths other people who worked hard to build cool things.

It doesn't matter what came first. What matters is what actually managed to pull off the ultimate success.

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> (and by execution I don't just mean invention of a prototype but actual productization and distribution)

So, the STEPS project I mentioned above¹ doesn't count? Bret Victor's work wouldn't count? That's incredibly short sighted.

You seem to have missed the part where it's really really hard to be successful with unnatural stuff, even when that stuff is unbelievably useful and valuable. Writing is unnatural, and took a long time to spread. It's still not there yet, and with the television and YouTube, we're actually reverting back a little bit.

Computing is even less natural, so instead of a Victor-esque interactive wonder, we got the caveman interface, where you point and you grunt².

Speaking of badmouthing, my heart breaks every time someone implies that recent Apple devices are cool. They're dystopian demons that seduced people into giving into thinking digital prisons are cool. The Apple ][ was cool. The iPad is crap (it could be cool, with the right OS).

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15266230

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKxzK9xtSXM&t=2m18s

> So, the STEPS project I mentioned above¹ doesn't count? Bret Victor's work wouldn't count? That's incredibly short sighted.

It is incredibly short sighted to make an assumption about what I said and criticize on that wrong assumption. There's a term for this logical fallacy but i forget.

Anyway, there's a huge difference between coming up with an idea/prototype and turning it into a product that's meant for mainstream usage. You would only know this if you have actually built something that's meant for mainstream usage so if you don't get this it's fine, but try doing that next time and you'll realize that's true.

What I'm criticizing is his comments on Apple's implementation decisions on things like the stylus. There are plenty of reasons why they decided to go that way, and I totally understand if this criticism was coming from some ignorant journalist who hasn't built anything (because they're ignorant), but Alan Kay should know better. There are way more things to consider than just ideals when you're building a real product.

This is probably why Xerox Parc built so many innovative prototypes but most of them were commercialized by other companies. If they had people like Steve Jobs instead, Xerox would be Apple by now.

If you think I'm being overly critical, just watch some of his speech videos on youtube, too much of what he says is based on the past and not the future.

> It is incredibly short sighted to make an assumption about what I said and criticize on that wrong assumption.

Are you saying I was mistaken and the STEPS project and Bret Victor's demos do count after all? Even though they're prototypes that haven't been "productised and distributed"?

I merely assumed you meant what you wrote. If you didn't, don't complain.

> What I'm criticizing is his comments on Apple's implementation decisions on things like the stylus.

Come on, that criticism was spot on. The iPad could have a spot for the pen. The pen could be tethered to the iPad. Apple could have sold pen like they now do. The Nintendo DS ships with a freaking pen.

I'm reluctant to dispute your point in general, but that was a bad example.

> The iPad could have a spot for the pen. The pen could be tethered to the iPad.

Yes they could, but I really think this is subjective. In my case I prefer NOT to have a spot because of aesthetic reasons, plus I never use the stylus.

But like I said, this is subjective. And that's exactly the point. You can't really judge execution based on subjective qualities like this. It's impossible to satisfy everyone.

It's just a difference in vision. People have different priorities. For example the Bitcoin community right now is divided into two based on their philosophy, and you can't say one is right and one is wrong because each has their own vision and each side makes sense in their own right.

I'm sure Alan Kay had his own vision about what a computer could become. I think if he's so dissatisfied with what it's come to, the best approach is to build one himself and give it to the world. (But honestly, as someone who's been thinking a lot about this field, I see so many "plot holes" in all the criticism he's making)

I am all for visionaries building inspiring products and shipping to market. But it's sad to see people like him dwelling on the past instead of the future.

What part of "if you see a style, they blew it" is hard for you to understand?

Anyone who has put as much work into it as Kay has and delivered as many innovations is absolutely entitled to criticize. He is especially entitled to criticize products that built on his ideas but because of some fundamental flaws actually hobble the ideas and hobble society. This is important to point out and if he isn't qualified to do so then who is?

There's a difference between badmouthing and constructive criticism. Try reading through the entire article. I did. And there's tons of badmouthing and condescension.

The article is filtered through another reporter and I didn't find specific instance of badmouthing (but my reading is also filtered through my own notion of where I think Alan Kay is coming from.)

If you're interested in what Kay really means, maybe listen to some of his numerous other talks?

There are plenty of things worth doing that are not profitable. If anything, the people who made the profits where standing on the shoulders of giants like Kay; I think we can afford him some space to be grumpy over shitty execution and lack of vision. It's a matter of perspective; what you call cool things, Kay would call consumer bull crap; and I tend to agree.

If you're not building something for people, what are you building? Art?

I'm fine with that, but just because you're making art, doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot.

Also I think it's very condescending to think that others didn't have vision.

Lastly it's cheap to criticize someone else for "shitty execution" when you yourself have the ability to show with your own execution but you clearly haven't. It's easy to throw around the word "execution" but it's not an easy thing to do.

Herein lies a dangerous assumption prominent in neoliberal thinking: that "building something for people" is only possible by making something that is inherently "profitable." Kay has spoken endlessly on the fact that PARC was -- in spirit, structure, and personnel -- largely the last gasp of the ARPA/IPTO funding culture. That we don't have this kind of basic research funding anymore is one of the reasons we don't have inventions on par with the Internet and personal computing. This is one of the points he harps on about.

Few companies today will create anything that is a truly shattering invention, for the simple fact that companies are not structured to invest the time and money in ways that such inventions demand: decade long cycles, where failure and "wasting" money is the norm. The quarterly earnings cycle prevents this. What's worse, that cycle has been absorbed into the way politicians and governments now think. Today the NSF wants you to demonstrate how your research will produce the desired results when applying for grants. That's not how exploratory basic research works. You'll only ever get more arcane iterations on current systems and technologies.

Kay has spent his life doing this kind of exploratory research. PARC, Squeak, STEPS -- I'd call all of that "execution." But perhaps others who see businesses and profits as the sole reason to get up in the morning would disagree.

1. I agree with your general argument about the need for deep research.

2. Which means you're making assumptions about what I'm thinking.

3. Please don't label others on the Internet with words like "Neoliberal", etc. We are all same people and there may be misunderstanding but we are not fundamentally different species.

4. My point was not to say these not-for-profit research is useless, but that if you're in this field, you should own it. If people build things that are mediocre and you know a better way, why not build one and show it for yourself? He hasn't done that because he doesn't know either. And by "Knowing" I mean actually knowing to build a product that people will use without any problem. It is easy to criticize implementation, it's not easy to actually do it yourself. With all due respect, prototyping and actually turning it into a product that general public can use are completely different ball games.

He didn't call you a neo-liberal. Your whole argument however does rely on the now widespread (and false) assumption that anything worthwhile can be made profitable with the current economic system.

By the way, Alan Kay has built stuff people can actually use. Scratch, for instance is so usable that even children can learn it.

Ah. Learning. I don't want to assume, but it looks like you missed the part where Alan Kay wants the general public to learn about computers, and stops viewing them as magic golems. This is a completely different ball game from merely making a popular consumer device.

What does building for people (which I am) have to do with making profits (which I don't)? What about sharing? Building for profit is the opposite of building for people, the two mind sets are not compatible.

> and actually shows his vision through his own execution

As Steve Jobs reportedly was fond of saying, "Great artists ship."

Among the shallowest of cheapjack Silicon Valley slogans. But certainly revealing of its ethos. In such a climate one could be forgiven for imagining that not everything has to be a commercial product to be used, appreciated, or valuable. What slovenly "artists" we had in the government oh so long ago, who never "shipped" the Internet.

What would the Internet be like today had it remained a government project?

Not the point. "What would information technology be like today if ARPA/IPTO style funding still existed?" would be the more relevant question. I'd call those dudes "great artists". That's the community Kay comes from, the one that gave rise to the Internet, PARC, and everything else that several generations of hustlers have made careers off iterating upon.

It's also worth noting that TCP/IP was able to outfox the planned X.25 ISO standard for international network transport in large part because ARPA was releasing code and standards for free and testing it live. All of that happened before the Internet was commercialized.

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