Alan Kay: A Conversation with CMU Faculty and Students (2007) [video]

Re:Alan Kay: A Conversation with CMU Faculty and Students (2... by michael_j_ward on Saturday March 05, 2022 @11:26AM (#30568824)

> "Every virtual machine today is imitating in software what we was directly in the hardware in 1961. That's one of the reasons I say we don't have a field. The reason we don't have a field is because none of you know this. It'd be like a physicist not knowing what Newton had done." ~paraphrasing around 52:45

As someone that did not know and would certainly like to learn more about the history of computing, what books / resources would you recommend?

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Re:Alan Kay: A Conversation with CMU Faculty and Students (2... by kristoft on Saturday March 05, 2022 @11:37AM (#30568946)

I'd recommend going through "Early history of Smalltalk" and "The Dream machine". First covers Kay's work and Smalltalk - how it started, what was the reasoning behind it. I'm still in progress with the second one, but it gives pretty deep dive in history of computing, covering a lot about personalities behind the field and their work.

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Re:Alan Kay: A Conversation with CMU Faculty and Students (2... by jazzido on Saturday March 05, 2022 @12:10PM (#30569365)

I would add "Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" by Michael Hiltzik.

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Re:Alan Kay: A Conversation with CMU Faculty and Students (2... by eirikvaa on Saturday March 05, 2022 @03:49PM (#30571715)

The Innovators by Walter Isaacson and Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon are excellent.

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