Bret Victor - Seeing Spaces
Why Hacker News recommends it
Listed alongside his other talks as foundational context for Dynamicland and visual-programming ideas, and he is the most frequently cited speaker on such threads.
What it is
Bret Victor's talk proposing a new kind of maker space built for seeing and understanding a project's behavior: inside it, across time and across possibilities. It argues for scientific understanding over recipes and rules of thumb.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2017 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec skadamat · 2017-10 · on “The HARC First Year Report”
Highly recommend Bret's 2 talks for context: [1] Seeing Spaces: [this video] [2] Humane Representation of Thought: [LINK]
Recommends skadamat · 2017-06 · on “Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?”
It's going to be entirely different I feel. Instead of manipulating graphics on a flat screen, focus will probably be on manipulating physical objects on a table / in a room. Watch his 2 talks that highlight the thinking and inspiration behind the RealTalk project: [this video] [LINK]
Recommends mitchtbaum · 2018-10 · on “Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?”
on one level, yes on another, they're down right scary and overwhelming, or at least dumbfounding and perplexing ..thinking specifically about The Humane Representation of Thought [LINK] I had to stop it half way through.. :-/ see also Seeing Spaces [this video] and Media for Thinking the Unthinkable [LINK]
Recommends yesenadam · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: Has anyone fully attempted Bret Victor's vision?”
For the people asking who is Bret Victor: When "What are your favourite tech talks of all time?" is asked on HN, he gets more mentions than anyone else, usually. Some of his talks: Inventing on Principle [LINK] The Future of Programming [LINK] The Humane Representation of Thought [LINK] Media for Thinking the Unthinkable [LINK] Seeing Spaces [this video] Drawing Dynamic Visualizations [LINK] [LINK]
Cites fao_ · 2018-02 · on “Ergonomics of the Symbolics Lisp Machine (2012)”
Mm. I've been wondering recently why is it that Programmers don't have more specialized tools (Which incidentally reminds me of this lecture: [Bret Victor -- Seeing Spaces] [this video] ). It's interesting to think that high-performance traders have an entire market dedicated to specialized computer interfaces, terminals, etc. all focused on improving their productivity and ability to reason about the stock exchange. [LINK] As the top poster says about the Bloomberg terminals: ""1. You have to have a Bloomberg keyboard to work in finance. It's not even a question. It's a COGS for anybody who wants to work in finance or trading.""
Cites skadamat · 2024-10 · on “Show HN: Sava OS – A desktop interface for your web browser”
This is pretty neat! I wish web browsers on Mac could span to 2-3 monitors because then you could really build a great spatial environment for web browsing. [this video]