[HN Gopher] Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from...
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Ted Nelson on What Modern Programmers Can Learn from the Past
(2018)
Author : iloverss
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-08-19 12:40 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| turtleyacht wrote:
| A glut of very affordable, yet relevant, books from days of yore
| --many scanned, some still retained as physical treasures--marks
| the nascent field of computer science.
|
| I read and re-read parts of "Principles of Program Design" (1975)
| and type little C programs from King's "Modern C" (1996).
|
| The new wonders may come from familiarity with bare metal,
| algorithms, and the desire to build the "virtual machine" to
| solve each problem.
|
| It's a slow process. I draw out the boxes and stare blearily at
| COBOL examples. M.A. Jackson is the invisible guide, silent but
| for his proclamations.
|
| Each (non-UML) schematic logic accompanied by a single anxious
| thought:
|
| _Am I doing this right?_
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Little known fact: Ted Nelson worked at DataPoint in the early
| 1980s, for a couple years. How many people have even _heard_ of
| DataPoint anymore? They were hugely successful in the 1970s with
| their fancy terminals, arguably had the first personal computer,
| and viewed Ted as a prestige hire. It didn 't work out well as
| they faded into obscurity.
|
| He's mentioned in the third person in my book
| https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks. but he doesn't appear as
| a character.
| bitwize wrote:
| Fun fact: The Intel 8008 was intended to be a single-chip CPU
| for the Datapoint 2200 terminal. It was delayed so ultimately
| wasn't used in the Datapoint 2200, but Intel had an agreement
| in place to sell the chip to other buyers.
|
| So that means every x86-64 PC sold has an ISA with a
| compatibility lineage that goes straight back to Datapoint.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| There's a book on Datapoint that I read, as research for my
| book. I read these things so you don't have to :)
|
| I'm also in touch with Gordon Peterson, the chief architect
| of ARCNet, which was a pretty decent LAN, way ahead of
| everyone else.
| stew-j wrote:
| More fun facts from "Programming the 80386", Crawford and
| Gelsinger (chief architect and designer of the 386
| respectively), 1987, pp. 1-2
|
| "The 4004 was quickly enhanced to the 8008. These devices,
| very trivial by today's standards, were novel but hardly
| taken seriously as computers of any worth...In 1978 the third
| generation was introduced--the 8086. This marked the
| beginning of microprocessors as 'real' computers...The 8088,
| the little brother of the 8086, was used in the IBM personal
| Computer...and this launched the personal computer
| revolution."
|
| I wish someone else would have read that for me.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think that's a pretty Intel centric view of things. Well
| before 1978 there were the 6502 (1975, MOS Technology) and
| the 6800 (1974, Motorola). Those were very much 'real'
| computers compared to the 8008.
| stew-j wrote:
| Yes, I was surprised to see marketing, even criticism of
| their own previous products, in a programming guide. Once
| past the "history lesson" the book is actually very good
| --with concrete examples on building an operating system
| and a coherent explanation of IEEE 754 floating point
| format. Hardware floating point for x86 used to be
| offered as a separate coprocessor chip--the x87 series--
| otherwise it had to be emulated in software.
|
| I would also argue that the 8008 was a real computer. The
| ENIAC was the first "real" computer, with its ~.005 MIPS
| (integer add/sub) vs. the 8008 at ~0.05 MIPS, and was a
| bit larger and more difficult to program. I wrote
| programs on a 6502-based Apple years before the IBM PC
| appeared.
| meremortals wrote:
| Wish Lex Fridman would interview Ted!
| matesz wrote:
| Thought about this few times as well. This has to happen!
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Instead of Ted Nelson telling the world what everyone can learn
| from him, I would like to hear him talk about what he learned
| from the real world.
|
| Xanadu is probably the biggest vaporware in the history of
| computing.
|
| Maybe some lessons learned about how he had all these "brilliant"
| ideas but never actually made something that actual people
| actually use.
|
| But that would require humility, introspection, and self-
| awareness so it is not likely to happen.
| thirdtrigger wrote:
| Always when Ted Nelson shows up, this point is made one way or
| the other. I even once heard Vint Cerf make these points at a
| conference.
|
| 1. Xanadu being vaporware 2. His ego
|
| What I really don't get is what Ted Nelson does to trigger this
| anger in people.
|
| E.g., his book computer lib/dream machines inspired so many,
| and I find him super self-aware. His appearance in Werner
| Herzog's movie about the internet was (IMHO) so refreshing.
|
| I love Ted's work, and it's a huge inspiration to me in my
| daily work. This video just adds to that.
| carapace wrote:
| I agree except for that last sentence. If you were to delete it
| the whole comment would be much better, IMO.
| cryo wrote:
| On one side the Xanadu implementations over the decades are a
| complete failure. On the other side, imho some of the ideas
| will survive and one day make it into successful software
| projects. Good ideas aren't destroyed by poor excecution.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Then again as Steve Jobs said:
|
| "ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a
| multiplier. Execution is worth millions."
| cryo wrote:
| In terms of quickly making money this is true.
|
| But here I'd like to think about likely world changing
| tech. As long as the (successful) execution comes one day,
| it doesn't matter if it happens 20 years ago or 10 years
| from now.
| [deleted]
| samsquire wrote:
| Mathematics, philosophy, theology and science began as
| ideas. Even if you aren't the person to develop your ideas,
| they still have value to civilization.
| Rochus wrote:
| > ideas are worth nothing unless executed.
|
| Maybe if you only have a business focus. He was apparently
| not interested in fundamental research.
| analog31 wrote:
| Even in research you have to "do" something with an idea,
| at least hang your hat on a specific prediction, or carry
| out the experiment.
| Rochus wrote:
| There is quite a difference between fundamental and
| applied research.
| samsquire wrote:
| If people didn't have the ideas or write down their
| thoughts of numbers, mathematics where would science,
| physics, electronics be.
|
| We stand on the shoulders of giants
| runevault wrote:
| Yes and no. You won't reap any benefits if you fail to
| create something useful with an idea, but if you were the
| first person to get the idea out in the world and other
| people made it useful, you still created value by helping
| inspire the other person to pursue what you did. Just
| probably won't get any monetary gain FROM that.
| Rochus wrote:
| Transclusion is a very good idea from my point of view. I saw
| and used it in Ivar Jacobson's Objectory tool and eventually
| also implemented it in my CrossLine and other tools (see
| https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine,
| https://github.com/rochus-keller/FlowLine2/, etc.).
| chillpenguin wrote:
| Agreed! I also use it frequently in my wiki (I use
| TiddlyWiki).
| anotheryou wrote:
| but we now have roam research e.g.
| jonjacky wrote:
| _...(Nelson) never actually made something that actual people
| actually use._
|
| Actually, he did. He wrote and self-published the big book
| _Computer Lib /Dream Machines_, which was ubiquitous and
| influential in the 1970s. More about that book and its
| influence here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22176769
| AlbertCory wrote:
| History is full of people who considered themselves geniuses.
| Some of them really were.
|
| Nelson got his ideas out there and other people used them in
| various ways, often without giving him credit. Bill Atkinson
| was one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquNpWdf9vg) and he
| wasn't the first.
|
| at 1:35 in that video, Gary Kildall does give him credit, along
| with Doug Engelbart.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I was listening to a podcast a few years back, I think it was
| fortran related, and in any case, the guys talking were having
| fun putting their "old farts complaining about kids and their
| scateboards" hat on.
|
| At some point the conversation went a bit like this:
|
| - Do you know what else kids these days don't do?
|
| - What?
|
| - They don't declare all their variables at the top.
|
| - What?
|
| - Yep
|
| - They don't?
|
| - Nope
|
| - W ... where do they declare them then?
|
| - _Right_ before they use them.
|
| - No!
|
| - I shit you not.
|
| - Wtf
|
| I remember laughing hard, and realising I'm also becoming an old
| fart who complains about kids and their scateboards and shudders
| at the thought of variable declarations sprinkled thoughout code.
| :p
| Pepe1vo wrote:
| Being very much a kid (at heart at least), I'll wager the
| question: what's the case against declaring variables as you
| need them? Also, at the top of which scope are you supposed to
| declare variables, function scope, class scope, ... somewhere
| else?
| saghm wrote:
| > Being very much a kid (at heart at least), I'll wager the
| question: what's the case against declaring variables as you
| need them?
|
| There's not really one, it's just a joke about how some
| languages used to work.
|
| > Also, at the top of which scope are you supposed to declare
| variables, function scope, class scope, ... somewhere else?
|
| In C, you used to have to declare all local variables at the
| top of the function rather than throughout the body.
| jfoutz wrote:
| What? you want your compiler to backtrack and recalculate
| all the stack offsets? Just say how many bytes a call needs
| up front! Kids today, acting like computer time is free.
| xenomachina wrote:
| > In C, you used to have to declare all local variables at
| the top of the function rather than throughout the body.
|
| This is true, but support for block-scoped (as opposed to
| function-scoped) variable declarations was added to C a
| _long_ time ago. Every version of ANSI C supports them, and
| this stack exchange answer, https://softwareengineering.sta
| ckexchange.com/a/300274/19196, suggests that support was
| added to K&R C since at least 1978.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You declare variables at the top of the function, so compiler
| can calculate space reserved for those variables and emit
| `sub esp, N`.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| I won't make the case against but I will make the case for
| declaring them at the top. Think of a recipe letting you know
| that you need eggs and flour before telling you how to mix
| it. It lets you get all of your ingredients on the counter
| before you go reading the instructions. Having the variables
| up front lets you prepare your mind for the state before
| reasoning about the code.
| SilasX wrote:
| Not an answer but interesting nonetheless: In the nand2tetris
| course (where you build a computer from logic gates/flip-
| flops to the OS/compiler), the high level language you
| implement has this as a requirement, mainly to make the
| compiler easier to write.
| moffkalast wrote:
| TIL about Douglas Engelbart, such a visionary that even Occam's
| razor says he ought to be a time traveller.
| teddyh wrote:
| After watching _The Mother of All Demos_ at
| <https://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-demo.html>, I
| suggest you also read this:
|
| https://books.google.com/books?id=6f8VqnZaPQwC&pg=PA97
|
| It's an anonymized account (from 1982) of what happened to
| Douglas Engelbart (anonymized as _"Vision" Stanley_ ).
| labrador wrote:
| If this interests you I recommend "What the Dormouse Said: How
| the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry"
| by John Markoff and "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving
| Grace" by the BBC and Adam Curtis
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_o...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer
| Industry
|
| .. and how it didn't. Confessing I haven't actually read the
| book, but I've certainly read reviews & other articles _about_
| it.
|
| Hippies did not build the Internet. Or the personal computer
| industry. They were around and some jumped on it early, but
| it's clickbait to say they built it. The TV series "Halt and
| Catch Fire" is actually a better picture of that era (Season
| One, at least).
| cxr wrote:
| Howard Rheingold's book "Tools For Thought" profiles Ted (along
| with Engelbart, Licklider, and other familiar names). And you
| can read it for free nowadays from the author's own site.
| <http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/index.html#index>
| andsoitis wrote:
| The subtitle says Ted was the inventor of hypertext, but in the
| interview he credits Doug Engelbart. You can hear him say it if
| you listen from 4:30 to 4:45.
|
| "We thought computing would be artisanal. We did not imagine
| great monopolies."
|
| Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the
| power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the "we"
| refers to).
|
| "... artistic expression ..."
|
| Reminds me a lot of when Jaron Lanier talks about how he
| envisioned VR.
| ssivark wrote:
| > Even though hindsight is 20/20, I'm still surprised that the
| power of network effects didn't occur to him (or whoever the
| "we" refers to).
|
| To unwrap that, the "power" of great efficiencies of scale, but
| also "weakness" from the lack of adaptability and resilience
| inherent to monocultures.
|
| The jury is still out on which way the balance swings --
| especially because the former manifests in "typical events"
| while the latter manifests in "tail events". Post pandemic
| disruptions of logistical supply chains and supply-chain
| vulnerabilities in software, I think folks seem to (or at least
| ought to) be far more apprehensive of blindly submitting to
| network effects.
|
| In summary, it's surprising to me that even in hindsight people
| seem so enamored with network effects to be blind to the cons.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Right. No one in 1963 was imagining billions of people with a
| computer. Watch "Mad Men" if you want to time-travel.
| [deleted]
| scottLobster wrote:
| Academics rarely understand industry, it's just not what
| they're typically interested in. I got taught a lot of computer
| science theory in college, but at no point was I taught how
| commercial build systems work (unless you count make), and
| forget anything regarding scalability or manufacturing. Was
| actually quite frustrating for me when senior year rolled
| around and I still didn't fully understand how any of the
| theory I'd been shoving into my brain was actually used to
| create, say, a car or aircraft or even a calculator. At best I
| got a cursory series of lectures in scrum and assignments that
| required the use of Eclipse, and that was it. Even in the
| hardware-oriented EE side of the curriculum it was just working
| with basic prototype boards, nothing about the business side or
| mass production. It's not that my education was useless (far
| from it) but I wasn't taught how to "build" anything beyond toy
| projects until my first job.
|
| Granted, the people who had the knowledge to teach said methods
| were probably too busy making comparative bank in private
| industry, or perhaps were teaching business courses. Most
| academics are researchers, and researchers tend to be
| explorers, not builders.
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Ted coined the term "hypertext"; he built a prototype Xanadu
| platform [1] which incorporated it. Engelbart created an
| editing system which used something like hypertext internally.
| Ted coined the term in 1963, along with "hypermedia" [2];
| Engelbart published a paper in 1962 [3]; you can read it and
| decide for yourself whether he "invented" hypertext (by any
| name) in that paper.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
|
| [3] https://dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906-Framework.html
|
| Note that [1] says 1960 for Xanadu and [2] says 1963 for the
| term hypertext. Go figure.
|
| Edit: fixed typo
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I like learning from the past, when they were letting people
| download papers for free due to covid I got enough to keep me
| busy for a long time -- just need to find the time to do
| something with them because working outside tech means I have
| very little time for such things. Read some here and there,
| bother industry experts here, fun times.
|
| There's a lot of good ideas buried in the past out there that
| never took off because people adopted some other way due to that
| being what the textbooks teach or whatever. Most of what I look
| at isn't applicable to anything I do, unless I were to find a
| pile of money so I could write a compiler, but I find it
| interesting and like messing with language grammars and compiler
| theory. Someday I might even get past the AST stage with my
| playing around.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I'm sad that we no longer have any Ted Nelson's in the world of
| tech. There's simply too much money now for smart people to waste
| their time on "interesting" things.
| azeirah wrote:
| There's a whole subculture of super cool developers who take
| inspiration from the whole Ted Nelson, Alan Kay/PARC, Douglas
| Engelbart, Bret Victor branch of software history; ie,
| visionaries.
|
| Two are listed below, but there are many more. Nicky case is
| one of the most well known ones, Bret Victor himself is very
| well known and very active. There're also a lot of lesser known
| people in the space,
|
| - Patrick Dubroy: wrote Ohm, makes cool stuff
|
| - @azlenelza on Twitter
|
| - @codexeditor on Twitter: He's building by far the most
| professional, serious and very very inventive digitised text...
| system? I have no idea what to call it. It's far far beyond
| what Roam, Obsidian etc can do. I think Ted would love to have
| a conversation with this guy. It goes deep in all directions.
|
| - Andy Matuschak is worth mentioning. Goes deep into learning
| and memory research, and building tools around this.
|
| - Tudor Girba @girba on twitter, makes moldable software
| environments: Tl;dr, tools to make custom IDEs in seconds to
| minutes that fit your current task perfectly. Very interesting
| stuff built on Pharo smalltalk
|
| - Omar @rsnous on Twitter, posts thought experiments about
| weird interactions with computers multiple times per week.
| Sometimes cool ideas come out of it :
|
| Of course not all of these people are or will be visionaries of
| the same level as Ted, but these are all people working to
| experiment with the status quo, or step out of it completely.
| chillpenguin wrote:
| Fitting with your list, I would add the Croquet team, who are
| continuing Engelbart's legacy of collaborative multi-user
| software. Some of them are on twitter as well.
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| If I may nominate myself, take a look at my work, why not?
| stew-j wrote:
| After a cursory look I found it interesting. Homoiconocity of
| assembly language isn't something I had thought of--although
| I have been working on a higher level S-expression based
| assembly that is lowered to more concrete assembly for
| Scheme86 microcoded emulation.
|
| I'm no genius for sure, but even when I do sometimes find
| myself ahead of the curve, I fall into Hamlet's dilemma:
|
| "...Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the
| native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast
| of Thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with
| this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of
| action." Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
|
| I wish I could explain why the best people and ideas are
| ignored, or bullied away, but I am at a loss. Best wishes.
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| I appreciate the praise. The base of much of my work
| involves removing what we currently consider to be text
| from computing, on both ends. An assembler with its
| language is inferior to my machine code development tool
| with an interactive interface filled with redundant
| information; on the other end, I don't believe we should
| store text as characters, and I'm currently making progress
| on that.
|
| I found no way to contact the author of this, as an
| example, but it's similar, except I'm making some progress:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32495133
|
| I've largely given up on promoting my novel work here, as
| it never makes the front page, and none of my work ever
| gets any interesting comments whenever it does.
| stew-j wrote:
| > I don't believe we should store text as characters
|
| Could you briefly elaborate?
|
| [edit]
|
| I read the article on your HN link. I didn't quite "get
| it". Program text gets in the way, let's replace it with
| [?]. Dr. Strandh at U. of Bordeaux, et al., have argued
| that we shouldn't store programs as text files in an
| operating system--is that what you are advocating? An
| image based system, for example?
|
| > none of my work ever gets any interesting comments
| whenever it does
|
| Sorry for my part in that, most people don't find me
| interesting. :) My work doesn't get much attention
| either, even if someone else happens upon it:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Common_Lisp/comments/ezruuc/tove
| ro_...
|
| ----
|
| I don't know why I keep quoting Shakespeare this week, I
| mostly slept through the Shakespeare module in high
| school English, but I guess some filtered through and
| maybe WRT promotion on the Internet:
|
| "Had I so lavish of my presence been, so common-hackneyed
| in the eyes of men, so stale and cheap to vulgar company,
| opinion, that did help me to the crown, had still kept
| loyal to possession and left me in reputeless banishment,
| a fellow of no mark nor likelihood." Henry IV, Part 1,
| Act 3, Scene 2
|
| It seems to me like for the most part only the best
| connected, ruthless, garrulous, overly vocal people get
| their ideas heard. I've tried business development orgs
| (including personal connections), directly contacting
| relevant researchers or sources of funding, on and on.
| Mostly, the advice has been to throw the spaghetti on the
| wall (put up a Github project, e.g.) and see what sticks
| (yell on Twitter, try to get some users). Even one of the
| founders of this site had difficulty marketing his idea
| for a new variant of Lisp, you know.
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| Yes, I can elaborate:
| http://verisimilitudes.net/2018-06-06
|
| This is my current progress:
| http://verisimilitudes.net/2022-06-13
|
| However, that was somewhat a waste of time, so I also
| wrote this reflection on it:
| http://verisimilitudes.net/2022-06-17
|
| > Sorry for my part in that, most people don't find me
| interesting.
|
| I didn't intend the remark as an insult.
|
| It's interesting to mention Shakespeare so much. I'm
| reading _The Merchant of Venice_ lately.
|
| > It seems to me like for the most part only the best
| connected, ruthless, garrulous, overly vocal people get
| their ideas heard.
|
| Yes.
|
| > I've tried business development orgs (including
| personal connections), directly contacting relevant
| researchers or sources of funding, on and on.
|
| I tried contacting VPRI and similar organizations, but to
| silence.
| kastagg wrote:
| Not everyone is working at whichever shop offers the highest
| salary. There are many smart people who are willing to take a
| pay cut to work on interesting problems. There are some smart
| people who are already financially secure so that they could
| afford a pay cut.
| carapace wrote:
| First off, we still have THE Ted Nelson! He's old but he ain't
| dead yet.
|
| (He might even read this thread!?)
|
| - - - -
|
| There are some modern day Ted Nelsons:
|
| Sean Mcdirmid comes to mind. (He's on HN. Dude, didn't you used
| to have a blog?)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/seanmcdirmid
|
| https://confengine.com/user/sean-mcdirmid
|
| Or Jonathan Edwards https://www.subtext-lang.org/AboutMe.htm
|
| There's the folks behind Enso/Luna https://enso.org/ among
| others. Jef Raskin's son Asa is still doing things
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Correct. Engelbart IS dead, RIP.
|
| If you get a chance to see Nelson, do it. You never know if
| you'll get another chance.
| openfuture wrote:
| Oh we definitely still have Ted Nelsons, what we don't have is
| a way to find them. Right now people are lost deep in some
| social media private groups and the surface level information
| is all war, disease and drugs.
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| https://youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson
| irogers wrote:
| matesz wrote:
| Really not nice of you to post this without linking Ted's
| response.
|
| To anyone interested here it is
| http://web.archive.org/web/20001003011753/http://xanadu.com....
| zasdffaa wrote:
| Wow, that was a full-on riposte.
| bitwize wrote:
| The quotes you chose seem suggest you were trying to insinuate
| Nelson was grooming those kids. Maybe that's what the author
| was trying to insinuate as well. Facts supporting this
| insinuation are, unfortunately, absent.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fortunately.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| way of a stretch and not warranted that I know of..
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I was a kid at some WELL parties - disingenuous reporters,
| Hollywood opportunists and Ivy Elites are not unknown to the
| artists, troopers and perverts that actually did lots of
| interesting things, with society dog-piling in.
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