Rethinking CS Education | Alan Kay, CrossRoads 2015

[@Frisenette]

Mr. Kay is in rare form in this. And his usual form is not what you'd call lacking. The filming and editing of this is also of rare quality for this kind of recording.

[@sebastianconcept]

Is such a pleasure to hear him. This critical thinking is invaluable. I find this remarkably stimulating

[@pawelmagnowski2014]

29:00 It's because web used to be a research project and now it's a commercial project so innovation will move as slow as possible to maximize profits

[@leeroyescu]

1:03:06 Looking under the lamppost for the lost keys, also known as bike-shedding, or Parkinson's law of triviality, or just plain "doing busywork"

[@Silly.Old.Sisyphus]

check out the two on the right staring at their mobile phones.

[@matthewkaras7722]

If thinking isn't logic - what is thinking?

[@Sonsequence]

His is almost certainly a sincere and productive mind but as a programmer I learned close to zero from this. He hovered above actually saying what he thought was wrong with CS education and in the two or so moments he said something specific I believe he was wrong. "The web browser should have been made with a WYSIWYG editor." This man clearly knows nothing about the the long history of WYSIWYG web editors and how they have mostly been disabling training wheels rather than anything sustainable. He's probably wondering why a browser isn't like desktop publishing software. For the same reason that people who do desktop publishing deliver their work on paper or PDF file. You don't need or want the extra data, complexity and software to edit your copy of a magazine. Mr Kay is imagining an ocean of easily editable web pages as if a bunch of web pages is what the web is. He'd recommend you tweet to your followers by editing all their newsfeed pages one by one. In fact, his contrary use of the web browser as an example is a killer blow to his thesis. The reason the internet existed for a good while before it was put to mass use by a web browser was because the other potential inventors of it had a God complex like Alan Kay. Tim Berners-Lee was aware of previous web browser ideas and despite agreeing with many of their grander visions he was prepared to launch a good skeleton before putting in the other stuff he wanted such as two-way links and WYSIWYG editing. Those things weren't introduced because it turns out they weren't vital enough. Not that everything was perfect. There are new ideas such as IPFS which aims to replace HTTP but the problems of impermanence and difficulties of trust that it solves weren't the ones strongly considered 25 years ago. 2. CS courses teach some things which fail to abstract away the computer's inner workings like a CAD program does. Seriously? The difference between computer science and industrial design is that one is about learning the inner workings of a computer and the other is not. There are many things that are a waste of time to do in the terminal but you'll need to learn how to go into the guts if you want to make a computer do something new (which is essentially the case with building nearly any software).

[@AmeerFazal]

I can't articulate well, but I believe his ideas are wonderful. 1. After personal computers the biggest thing is Internet. (2 are invention of last century). Majority of people are using Internet with a tiny piece of badly designed software called browser. He mention in his many talks about Douglas Engelbart's ideas (compare that as wheel and Tim Berners Lee's idea a broken wheel). 2. Computer Science is not about learning inner working of a computer. He is saying the degree of utilization of computer (the thinking amplifier, the aid) is very less in Computer Science field compared to others.

[@lyssp.hacker3948]

I do not have time to go into details, but I have to say that you are not at all familiar with Alan Kay's ideas, nor where he is coming from (ARPA/PARC community of the 60s and 70s). Regarding the web, please take a look at Hypercard and LOCUS (distributed operating system), both systems from the 80s. Why people who did the web browser and the web did not at least make advances on those promising systems? Your comment about CS education suggests that you are completely missing the point on what Dr. Kay is saying. He is working on making education better for something like 50 years, and with his teams over the years did some super interesting things. Please familiarize yourself with that work before letting go your ignorant comments.