Alan Kay : July 2007 : A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it for Kay's blunt critique of today's computing and standard CS curricula.
What it is
Alan Kay visits Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science in 2007 for an informal conversation with faculty and students. He discusses the state of CS education and criticizes mainstream computing.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec blessedonekobo · 2024-03 · on “Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]”
This probably my favorite because it was mostly unscripted Alan Kay : July 2007 : A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students [this video]
Recommends skadamat · 2017-10 · on “The Future of Programming (2013)”
I think you'll like the discussion he had at CMU a few years back, which focused a lot on the technology side of things [this video]
Recommends jstewartmobile · 2017-12 · on “Comparison of GreenArrays Chips with TI Micropower Controllers (2010) [pdf]”
Funny you should say that. Reminds me of this video[0] where Alan Kay, almost impolitely, tears into today's computing while talking at CMU. [0] [this video]
Cites michael_j_ward · 2022-04 · on “We’ve got a science opportunity overload: Launching the Wolfram Institute”
Alan Kay has part of the answer in this talk [0] where elucidates the errors taken by formal Comp Sci education. He claims there was a battle in the university between testable curriculum centered around Algorithms and builder curriculums based around hardware and distributed systems, and says it's a shame that algorithms won out. [0] Alan Kay : July 2007 : A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students [this video]
Cites tomcat27 · 2022-05 · on “A Case for an Open Source CS Curriculum [pdf] (2018)”
I'm glad an insider is thinking about this. But why do I have a feeling that it's written with an idea to make faculty life easy, not necessarily for a great student learning outcome, although that's what they say. Alan Kay (Turing Prize 2004) argues against current standard CS curriculum. [this video] Anyway few unrelated thoughts. --- The undergrad CS courses mostly do not deviate in content.The variance is in quality. "pick good professor over interesting course" paid off for me in university. Factors such as these matter: course pace, instructor and TA accessibility, course slides and other material quality, lecture interesting or boring etc. --- Isn't it surprising that one of the most watch