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Alan Kay Demos GRaIL

Vincent Gable

23 subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2017 to 2023.
  • Presented by Alan Kay, computing pioneer

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

30K views17 years ago2 recommendations

History and cultureSoftware designHistory of computingPeople who shaped computingLanguage design and type systems

Alan Kay demonstrates GRaIL, an early graphical input language system from 1968 that recognized hand-drawn gestures to build programs.

Alan Kay demonstrates a GRaIL (GRaphical Input Language) system from about 1968. From "Doing With Images Makes Symbols: Communicating With Computers"

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as an amazing historical demo of early visual programming and handwriting recognition that was far ahead of its time.

some-mthfkaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Emacs Is Not Enough”

…in building such a workflow. The way it will work is: lenses (aka editors) are cells (aka widgets). So you will be able to position things freely, anywhere. You could even connect and see actual symbols get imported and such. As for the CL side, unimporting a symbol (aka removing a connection) is possible, so I see no problem there either : ) 1 link to this video…
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colllectorofon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Magic Paper”

This line of thinking goes back even further. Back to 1968 when GRAIL was developed: link to this video Pretty amazing stuff, even today.
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u/AsIAmL1: Tensor Studioin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “What about Visual Programming Languages (VPL)?”

GRaIL — link to this video
3View on Reddit

some1elseon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: Interactive, Visual Explanation of the GRAIL Handwriting Recognizer”

Thanks for this wonderful essay! I love learning about that period in computing, when a lot of what we use today was first challenged. It's easy to see how those same principles apply to the GRaIL visual programming interface demo1, where different strokes create different types of elements (boxes, outputs, connections, ...). 1: link to this video
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kenon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Loopy: a tool for thinking in systems (2017)”

I love it! It's like the simulations of iThink 1, with the "analogic" sketching UI of GRaIL 2. 1: link 2: link to this video
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jcelerieron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Max/MSP: A visual programming language for music and multimedia”

> Languages like these also don't have the almost hundred years of research and effort in to creating an ecosystem around them like text-based languages do. c'mon, the first dataflow languages date from the 60s, that's barely after the first textual PLs - see eg link to this video > There's no way to harness the incredible power of text editors like vim or emacs. have fun showing most art students how to use vim or emacs :p just typing a few commands in a console to build a project is already a galore from past teaching experience.
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jancsikaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)”

…lity my hope is some slice of devs have achieved this and I've summoned links to their projects by claiming the opposite on the internet.) Edit: just so I get the right incantation for summoning links-- I'm talking about the whole enchilada of a visual language that runs and rebuilds the user's flowchart program as the user modelessly edits it. 1: link to this video…
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