look i'm as much of a bret victor fanboi as the next guy, but that one felt a little like "whoa ok you're too cool for school now huh"

I think it conveys a sense of dedication to his work that is at odds with the ever-looming desire to pontificate than it does aloofness toward others.

I’m not familiar with him or his work beyond the cursory glance at his Wikipedia page that I made after recognizing the homepage from marginalia.nu binges, but I associated the statement with a certain level of exhaustion, or disinclination rather, from the desire to publicly comment on whatever bleeding edge or attention-grabbing topic a man of his profession and experience may encounter. I have no clue what this guy does with certainty, it sounds sort of Alan Kay-like? But based off this post it sounds like there’s a lot of ground he intends to cover with whatever he’s got going on that requires a lot of thought. Thought that he is reluctant to share at a toot’s notice.

If you're not familiar with him, you could watch his "Inventing on Principle" talk [1] from 11 years ago. Starting at around the 12 minute mark should get you right to the good stuff (though it's all worth watching and thinking about). This is the talk that made him famous.

Unfortunately, the demo he showed in that talk never really turned in to a product or movement that revolutionized programming as at the time many of us hoped it might.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

A pitfall of "Inventing on Principle", one which I believe Victor himself later noted, is that the talk is really a modest statement on what bringing some philosophy into your work could do, but it has an overwhelmingly engaging demo. Everyone tried to copy the demo in a kind of "wave of the future next gen programming" hype cycle instead of taking home the concept and trying to put that into work they were already doing.

And, having been one of those impressed with the demo, now I look back on it thinking "this business of software is cargo-culting the whole way down, isn't it."

Light Table was the only real attempt I'm aware of. Any other notables?

Swift creator also influenced though i don't remember where i heard or read that.

Yes! I've seen first hand how much it helps (is it just me in particular? maybe not everyone needs it?) programming things I can visualize (in a literal sense of seeing, but I think the essence is really being in close contact with intermediate results). So, I just make ways to visualize things :)

A particularly simple and amazing tool for this is p5.js, with an editor that, to me, enables exactly the kind of workflow shown here: editor.p5js.org

Whatever you are going to do, you can draw alongside to help you make sense of it better. I do this on my own mind sometimes, but for example visualizing and small neural networks (which I have been messing around with) can't be done on my imagination alone.

I think the important is just that you have some library that makes drawing easy, and put it alongside your work. Of course, it's extra work to make diagrams of everything. But sometimes they really help. I think it's important to simply have this possibility in mind.

(maybe it should have a name? Visualization-enhanced programming? Print-programming? I think (e.g. jupyter) notebooks strive toward this, although tbh I prefer the p5js environment without a linear format)

It should be up to us to decide if and when this extra work is worthwhile. I think really designing (and discovering) things is what benefits the most from this style (i.e. game design, product design, scientific experimentation). So you need programmers working on a design problem and/or designers working on a programming problem; or you could have them side-by-side collaborating (and not just a designer imagining things, and a programmer following specifications to the letter).

It also requires a kind of artistic taste to make things look good, but of course that's something you can develop.

It's a really enjoyable process to be able to get a feel for what you're doing!

(See here: https://editor.p5js.org/gustavo.nramires/sketches/sLA07wpa_ for some personal experiments in visualizing graphs and sparse neural nets, https://editor.p5js.org/gustavo.nramires/sketches/1Bb5VIHi2 for designing an algorithm to efficiently make a roguelike map)

I think you're saying is that we don't get this for 'free'. There's probably no tool (although maaaybe AI could help?) that just instantly visualizes anything you could do. Instead it's up to us to do it :) (although good graphics libraries and a tool that encourages you to recompile often is almost essential imo!)

And here's the kind of art I could likely never just simply imagine to existence, experimentation is essential! https://editor.p5js.org/gustavo.nramires/sketches/pVFFT_8E5

I've used this technique quite a bit in the past, but often not enough. I work in games so a lot of problems are actual visual 2d or 3d problems. Things like: finding the closest valid object I can target at my given heading. Simple enough, but as things get complicated it's often the simple things that trip you up, and visualizations can often make the problem obvious.

That p5 editor looks nice for this sort of thing. It's important to be able to get the visualizations in quickly, otherwise you risk wasting time.

A tool I've dreamed up, that I never seem to have time to implement, is to send debug information to some form of database, and then being able to query and render that data as you like (from another client). To see bar/line charts of data, spatial visuals, more abstract graphs like in your examples, timeline scrubbers, etc... maybe some day I'll get around to making it.

Anyway, thanks for your comment. I'm interested in this kind of thing.

> This is the talk that made him famous.

He was already pretty famous before that from Magic Ink, if not even earlier work.

I vaguely recall a meme somewhere about how ridiculous it is to ask, say, a sports or movie star their opinion on politics or something else that isn't their field just because they're famous.

Heck, even within one's field, Bret may have neat ideas about interfaces for programming and attained a sort of celebrity status for some of us, but that doesn't mean he can confidently answer random questions from strangers. He's a researcher, not a guru.

That last part stands out to me, him being a researcher, that is. I wonder if there is any detriment to the idea of researchers or other “knowledge workers” who use social media at the risk of exposing new developments or ideas to people who may be uninformed or unqualified in regard to whatever the individual is exposing publicly. Could/does this affect what they share or how they/others perceive their work that is shared?

Sure does. Faraday stopped his EM experiments, not cuz of ignorant ppl, but "great" mathematicians of the day were mocking him for his lack of math skills. Without those experiments, no one would have ever dreamt up electromagnetism. And on the flip side, "qualified" ppl who couldnt grok the math of Maxwell or Heaviside, would dismiss the math as just too complex. This type of stuff happens all the time. Social media amplifies it. But you just have to find good ppl and ignore the herd to make progress. And dont mistake capturing Attention on Social Media or HN for progress.

Discoveries are always preceded by a long string of "No" and why would you do this?

Use good science, but run weird experiments!

> I vaguely recall a meme somewhere about how ridiculous it is to ask, say, a sports or movie star their opinion on politics or something else that isn't their field just because they're famous.

Jürgen Klopp when asked about this opinion on COVID?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ4bKnpxbYc — great answer in a time where every-fucking-body had to share their opinion on it, and still do.

That's so great. Thank you for sharing it.

Those are the whites white teeth I have ever seen, incredible.

Also the message was great, the combination rarely happens!

Tech is extremely boring on social media because there are many more opinions than those truly dedicated to the craft.

You can argue that it shouldn’t be zero sum. But time and attention both are, and you can’t focus fully if you’re trying to “grow an audience.”

Formulating an opinion worth sharing takes work.

I just made the mistake of reading a few recent DHH blog posts, and I really appreciate the difference between these two people. Both have a large following, but one sits down and does his work, while the other owns a company and seems physically unable to stop opining.

The crown of thought leadership is heavy and full of thorns.

In defense of DHH, a lot of the things he blogs about are completed and successful (to him) company open-source projects. He's sharing what they have done. It's not all bad.

A lot of views are contrary and he presents his views strongly, so it's kind of off-putting.

I feel that as well. I'm at the point where I am knee deep in my PhD work, and I see that my commitment to that work makes me want to remove myself from other stuff. I just don't want to use any of my energy on anything else, and especially dealing with people in anything but an uncomplicated manner is the last thing I want to do. I am sure it must be doubly so if there is an audience to whatever you say and end up regret.

I have often envied how (I romanticize) it was before social media and hyper-connectivity, where you might be able to just fade out a little bit to focus on a project. Its a bit hard to get that long term focus when people expect you to be available and able to reply within the hour. Just saying "no" drains enough as it is. I don't have the backbone to put out that message though.

I've echoed this sentiment from time to time and someone recently asked me "Why don't you just disconnect and apologize later?"

Might not work for you, but I found this surprisingly liberating: allowing myself to just drop the ball, not respond, or just say "Sorry I can't" with no justification, so I can focus my energy where I need it

That line was my favorite.

It's challenging to be a public figure, present yourself on contemporary social media, and not be pressured (implicitly or explicitly) to speak up on everything.

Though I don't read this as being about political or social issues. How else would you have someone politely say, "I'd like to be left alone to do my work, but I'd also like to share with you what I'm working on."

What do you mean? "Though I don't read this as being about political or social issues."

People are more likely to ask Bret about computing issues.

ha, yeah, that reads as an argument fragment. I didn't express my whole thought.

It's the sort of statement that might get someone called out as being somewhere negative on some political spectrum, but I read it here as academic.

Dude probably gets absolutely spammed with, "can you read my paper | review my project | comment on this article?" requests.