Rethinking CS Education | Alan Kay, CrossRoads 2015
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN readers cite Kay's talks for his views on programming languages as user interfaces, thinking beyond logic, and why people struggle with complex systems.
What it is
Alan Kay argues for rethinking how computer science is taught in schools, drawing on his work on object-oriented programming and GUIs. He discusses how poorly people understand complex systems and what education could do about it.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2016 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec skadamat · 2018-07 · on “People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard”
I would really really encourage everyone here to watch Alan Kay's recent talks on how poorly we understand systems and why it's critical we get better at managing them. Some good ones: - [LINK] - [this video] Some people have strong opinions about Alan Kay's CS / programming work and I'd really encourage them to put them aside and deeply understand his points + context. The programming parts aren't ever the point, he's deeply interested in how as humans we improve our ability to collaboratively manage systems.
Recommends morphle · 2019-07 · on “Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career?”
I tend to want to teach these people, point them to books and knowledge so they can learn and be less shallow. That is a sure way to piss almost all of them off (unless they become your students), which rarely happens. Alan Kay describes and analyses why the majority of humanity act like you describe in many of his lectures. He answers and explains most of your points. Its hard to recommend these talks, the good bits are spread around 50 lectures. I'll be happy to discuss with you which bits you'll like. A first suggestion is [1][2]. >I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge. I love to talk to such people also, so I search for the
Cites xjay · 2016-01 · on “Ask HN: Which people and groups are researching new approaches to programming?”
Like many people, I think about this now and then, but I haven't done any work in that area. Ultimately, I picture a live environment, but not like Blueprint in UE4. I expect we'll end up with a predominantly interactive approach to programming, most likely visual drag-and-drop style programming, in a live environment that knows common patterns, data structures, algorithms; giving real-time advice, showing native code output as you go, etc. Basically, you're molding the system while monitoring it under various contexts, and you're programming against data models. Got a new Arduino board? Just drag and drop the data sheet model into your environment. It contains memory address information, re
Cites 0xdeadbeefbabe · 2016-06 · on “Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today”
Well what is thinking about then? What was the mistake the greeks made? In this video[0] you said thinking is not about logic and that was the mistake the greeks made. [0] [this video]