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If you're unfamiliar I would strongly recommend this ("Doing with Images Makes Symbols"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTz76_zdfk

The irony of this video is he's in danger of being referenced here in the same way he references Engelbart and Sutherland.



Thank you for a great recommendation; who is the presenter?


That's Alan Kay of Smalltalk/PARC fame. His OOPSLA talk is the other classic, worth it for his opening jokes about Dijkstra.

The fact that so much of our modern computing environment stems from the work of a molecular biologist trying to teach children to program is lost on many. He's truly a visionary, sometimes wrong, but always at least interesting.

EDIT: Haven't been able to find a proper clip of it, but the really relevant part to this is that back in the 70s at PARC they used to teach Smalltalk to kids, and the apps they'd produce were seriously non-trivial. Things like electronics schematics editors (you can see part of this in passing during the OOPSLA video) were implemented by children. This still blows my mind.




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