Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle

Prem recommended this talk (http://vimeo.com/36579366) by Bret Victor. The way code is so easily animated is nothing short of amazing even though it has been slowing moving that way for many years. Here are my comments about the talk with their time marks.

[2:10] 

 Le plus ce change, plus c'est la meme chose...

"2.1 The Bauhaus experience

The Bauhaus has generally been considered as the leading modern art school to implement new

methods of teaching aimed at encouraging creativity and development of personal abilities, with

much emphasis laid on practical work in workshops. One of the key courses which left and indelible

memory in many of the Bauhaus students undoubtedly was the “preliminary course”(Vorkurs) taught by Josef Albers. This course has been the source and starting point for many

subsequent courses in basic design throughout the world. A key point, in the pedagogy of form

developed in it, was the research of the relationship between form and material by experimenting

with different workshop materials. "(http://riunet.upv.es/bitstream/handle/10251/8835/Full%20paper%20J.M.%20Songel.pdf)

[7:54] that is cool

[16:51] animation of binary search

[23:10] Am I a voice in the wilderness when I say that software engineering is about a whole lot more than just coding??

[26:32] Tufte-ism

[27:57] Back to Bauhaus

[36:00] When he talks about how dreadful our current tools are, he is preaching to the choir. Why are UML diagrams so rarely animated by the code they are supposed to represent? Many years ago Visio was doing good work with this but the Visual Studio product has barely moved beyond the most rudimentary capabilities. 

[36:30] OK, this is where he becomes a Zorastrian...

[38:00] He starts proselytizing about how it is important to work for an idea or principle

[41:55] He claims that Tesler's principle of modelessness is his raison d'etre. Yet I can't help feeling that if I were to discover something so fundamental as the observation that modes are a barrier to usability, I might be inclined to push it as far as it goes too. Basili gave us GQM. I don't want to take anything away from either man but isn't it a bit hyperbolic to mythologize their one big idea? Can't he see that at some point it is no longer a springboard but a brick wall to further progress.

[43:13] paradigm shift, not a crusade against wrong. While I agree there is a qualitative difference between the tinkering that represents the vast majority of technical innovation, Tesler's contribution was far more inspired and fundamental to a way we think. Yet I am not buying this as some metaphysical truth.

[47:00] I do not disagree that the people he cites are highly motivated and answer to some higher calling than making money, getting papers published or any venal concern. What I believe motivates them is akin to a religious calling, a motivation that transcends the mechanics of what they are on about. Religious zeal has been highly motivating over human history and led to great things in art and architecture. I'll even grant that the motivation for GNU and the open source movement has a religious zeal that cannot be explained in purely rational terms. But I think he overstates his thesis. For me at least, I see this as the motivation that comes from the joy of creating. I see it as the same force that makes artists create. The difference is that for us we have software as a medium and not paint, steel, or society.

[50:00] This part of the talk sounds more genuine and meaningful, at least to me. What I find interesting is how he glosses over the pragmatics of pursuing self-actualization.

[51:00] It must be actionable. YES!!

Here is a link to his web page http://worrydream.com/

There are some interesting ideas there visually presented.