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Alan Kay - Programming and Scaling

Colin McDonnell

12K subscribers • 5 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 5 people: 4 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2026.
  • Presented by Alan Kay
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

36K views11 years ago5 recommendations

Software designHistory and cultureSoftware architectureHistory of computingObject-oriented design

Alan Kay discusses the theoretical limits of code size, software scaling, and how biology inspired object-oriented programming.

For cool updated about the future of computing, follow me at twitter.com/iamvriad. This video is about Alan Kay - Programming and Scaling

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an inspiring talk on rethinking software architecture, object-oriented design, and the future of computing.

unimpressiveon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

…link Excellent talk on the hardware side of security, goes into some really cool theoretical hard disk defense stuff, incredibly insightful and introduces a hardware security tech toy so fun you'll want to go out and order it the moment you're done watching. The speaker is entertaining as all heck to boot. "Programming and Scaling" by Alan Kay - link to this video Interesting talk on the theoretical limits of code size and engineering versus tinkering. Also talks a lot about Alan Kay's philosophy of computer science which analogizes systems to biological systems, which are the systems with the largest proven scaling on the planet. "The Mother Of All Demos" by Douglas Engelbart - link This talk is s…
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espeedon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Soup – Alan Kay on Objects”

This is one of my favorite Alan Kay talks of all time (I think this is the right version, but at the time it wasn't on YouTube)... Programming and Scaling - Alan Kay link to this video There's also one where he discusses anthropology and the human universals, but the title of that talk has escaped me for years. Anyone remember what that one's called?
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neuralkoion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Any New Computer Ideas?”

Check out Alan Kay's perspective on this 0. This talk is excellent and will cue you in on how to go about thinking about the fact that the way we program and view and understand computers, with the exception of recent advances in neural networks/LLMs, has followed largely unchanged for the past 65 or so years. 0 link to this video
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kacheon Lobsters • Recommends

Programming and Scaling
5View on Lobsters

gambleron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)”

Reminds me of some Alan Kay talks: link to this video He actually mentions the book that is the source for the first illustration in the article. He also often talks about the speed of molecules and how it's counter-intuitive to the commonplace idea of cell operation. Cell biology was an inspiration for original OOP (which wasn't much like Java/C++ at all). When reading about Covid stuff and immunity, I often think how these mechanism could be imitated in engineering. I definitely believe there are some general principles that we could benefit from without trying to "simulate" biology. Edit: Sorry, same author/illustrator, but different book.
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pascienton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today”

Hi Alan, You mentioned Bob Barton's lecture a few times 1, emphasizing the role he played in debunking some of your (and his own) ideas about computing. Could you touch on some dogmas that haven't yet been evoked in this thread or in your videos on YouTube ? Either from the 70's or today. Let me link to Ted Nelson's remarks about the tradition of files/lumps 2 for a start. Bullet-point may not be the ideal form for an answer but feel free to get away with that :) 1 link to this video 2 link
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armitronon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Lisp, Smalltalk, and the Power of Symmetry (2014)”

…sum of its parts. Lisp and Smalltalk will never become popular (read my previous comment), but that does not mean that they do not sit on an apex and still have a lot to give. To anyone interested in the "craft of programming", "the Art", there is nothing better period. Here are some references for you, from the masters themselves: 1 link 2 link to this video 3 link…
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NotUsingLinuxon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System”

…sh, You raise some interesting points in your article. I wonder how to comment or discuss this the most efficient way (here or elsewhere?) Some questions: Have you looked at haiku? What you describe as modules, I think Alan Kay calls "objects" in the smalltalk/Xerox tradition. Have you looked at his research project: STEPS reinventing programming? link to this video Some bits and parts of this is open source. Imagine a full system running on 10000 LoC I think this could be a step forward. Also this blurs if not throws away the distinction between "desktop and web(remote)" applications. Because if integration of remote objects is sandboxed but still transparent you get improved usability. Also I think y…
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gambleron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview”

It's a thing of its own. Used to be called informatics in some countries. Much better name, IMO. There are large parts of computer science that have nothing to do with computers. They're about information and can be applied outside of computers. I'm with Alan Kay when he says "computer science" used to be an aspiration and eventually became a misnomer. Same with software engineering. link to this video (Doesn't mean CS and SE are always "worse" than science and engineering. But they are currently very different.)
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u/jediknightin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “Survey: dumbest programming language feature ever?”

The only information in your answer is that you think that my answer is ridiculous. I have no idea about what part of it is ridiculous or what are the beliefs you have that led you to think that it is ridiculous. I could reevaluate my answer if I'm provided with information as to how is it wrong. The point about the unmanageable complexity in current OSs is taken from Alan Kay's perspective. Here is a presentation about it.
2View on Reddit

u/jediknightin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “How to start creating programming languages?”

I would encourage you to research the STEPS project of VPRI. They did a good job trying to use languages to solve problems. This presentation might help
1View on Reddit