Re:Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
by sitkack on Thursday July 20, 2017 @08:54PM
(#14817361)
Prototypes increase understanding and discovery without an undo burden on making something operational. The parent comment strikes me as a, "do you even".
Is it hero worship or having a wise, hardened bad-ass on the team?
Re:Peek Behind Bret Victor's Lab at YC HARC
by skadamat on Thursday July 20, 2017 @08:46PM
(#14817331)
Yeah this is spot on. The point of this kind of research is to discover how to frame the problem (we don't really know what it is yet) and create new contexts for thinking about computing. Under the lens of the current open problems in computing, their approach may seem odd, different, not grounded in evidence, etc. But like good art, good, foundational research provides new ways to think about the field entirely.
from Götz' writeup:
> Simply building prototypes with prototypes would not be a smart recipe for radical engineering: once in use, prototypes tend to break; thus, a toolset of prototypes would not be a very useful toolset for developing further prototypes. Bootstrapping as a process can thus only work if we assume that it is a larger process in which “tools and techniques” are developing with social structures and local knowledge over longer periods of time.
a lot of the ideas, or prototypes, in harc are half finished and or completely abandoned
sometimes an implementation's best contribution is the ancillary knowledge gained by attempting or developing
also, i think kay's presence is less 'hero worship' and more a reminder of shared goals(o) as well as a default standin
Götz's first contribution to a project in the space was to create an animation using cutouts from multiple copies of a picture of kay that were lying around
would you call lenna 'hero worship'?(i)
(o) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY
(i) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna