[HN Gopher] Introduction to Dynamicland (Bret Victor)
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Introduction to Dynamicland (Bret Victor)
Author : r3mko
Score : 68 points
Date : 2024-09-04 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dynamicland.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynamicland.org)
| foolishbard wrote:
| Much love to Bret. Dynamicland represents such a big shift in
| traditional computing.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| what do you mean a big shift in traditional computing? this
| doesn't seem to be anything anyone is "shifting" to ?
| nu11ptr wrote:
| As always with Bret Victor, the idea is huge and you can't help
| but get excited, but as a programmer of 35 years I'm always left
| wondering "well that is total cool for X and Y but how would you
| do Z?". I guess I just don't fully understand how rich the
| building blocks could be and whether you could be expressive
| enough to actually solve the same kinds of problems we do with
| other languages. Time will tell.
| FjordWarden wrote:
| His work is absolutely fantastic in both meanings of that word.
| rozap wrote:
| I always saw his work as something like a guiding principle,
| not necessarily something that will revolutionize computing as
| a whole. When you apply traditional computing constraints and
| boil down some of his ideas of immediacy, seeing the results of
| inputs quickly, etc, they're not really that earth shattering,
| but he communicates these ideas with compelling demos that make
| you think "wow, software can communicate so much more
| effectively when the interaction isn't painful". But actual
| details and implementation are left up to the reader.
|
| Years ago at work I was building an ETL tool from the ground up
| and my coworker and I were watching Bret Victor videos, reading
| Alan Kay's work, etc, etc. Young and naive. When I built the
| prototype for the tool, everything happened immediately and the
| feedback was on the order of milliseconds as you compiled and
| ran expressions that transformed datasets. That prototype was
| compelling enough that we based the real product on its ideas,
| and that whole interaction model carried through into the
| product. I was always working to make feedback immediate and
| visual, and absolutely that came at the cost of some additional
| complexity. But we ended up with a product that people thought
| was extremely fast (it wasn't _really_ in terms of absolute
| throughput...but it sure did _feel_ fast) and that people could
| play around with and shape their data at the same speed that
| they could think and type, which was pretty cool.
|
| Ultimately adoption among our customers was very good, all
| things considered (government customers move at their own
| pace), and I credit a lot of the success of it to the early
| decisions we made that prioritized joyful rather than hateful
| interaction.
|
| At the end of the day we were still just pushing pixels around
| on a screen which is underwhelming I guess, but there were
| elements of the fantastical Bret Victor demos that shaped how
| we did things and led to a better outcome.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Discussion over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41448022
| andrewstuart wrote:
| What is it ?
|
| I saw a bookshelf but not much else happened.
| pzs wrote:
| There is a video on the page in which Bret Victor explains what
| it is all about. I find it very difficult to summarize, but my
| best attemp would be something like transforming computation
| into an activity that a community of people performs via
| manipulating real world objects.
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