I first got turned on to the idea of "the implementation of the system is a tour of itself" when looking at STEPS, and having come off of an iPad-book project, imagining it as an ebook:
What we have for Realtalk goes further down, but shows a lot less of the dynamic state. (Currently none at all, but when we were building it, it had some simple but useful dynamic annotations.)
We've been playing around with tutorial activities that are more like games, e.g. Paula's pop-up book which teaches the communications protocol:
and I'd eventually like the system implementation to explain itself in such a fashion.
The implementation of the "Hypercard in the World" system that I did at 2 South Park was called "Bigboard", and it showed both the code and live data. It was arranged so that you could pretty much read what was going on from top to bottom, especially if you were messing around with the laser pointer and could trace its effects flowing through the system. But the best way to understand the system was to stand in front of Bigboard with another person exercising it and explaining it to you.
This system didn't go "all the way down", so Bigboard only had to cover the "upper layers". But oh man was it easy to explain those upper layers.
What we have for Realtalk goes further down, but shows a lot less of the dynamic state. (Currently none at all, but when we were building it, it had some simple but useful dynamic annotations.)
I really want to get back to this someday and make it more like Bigboard. Currently, it's useful for us (we reference it a lot ourselves, and it's great for planning out system changes), but for visitors it's more of a novelty than something they can get right away.
We've been playing around with tutorial activities that are more like games, e.g. Paula's pop-up book which teaches the communications protocol:
and I'd eventually like the system implementation to explain itself in such a fashion.
On Dec 11, 2017, at 9:47 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi David
The media idea for a system like Smalltalk online is that it could manifest the "Blue Books" etc itself, so that all the examples could be live (especially with Alex's and Yoshiki's "Worlds" stuff).
Cheers
Alan
From: David Smith
To: Alan Kay
Cc: John Maloney ; Daniel Ingalls ; Ted Kaehler ; Yoshiki Ohshima ; Alessandro Warth ; Bert Freudenberg ; Aran Lunzer ; Kim Rose ; Ken Perlin ; Bret Victor
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2017 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: Somethng we've never mustered the energy to do in a stronger context ....
I learned Smalltalk by studying Squeak. It was probably a bit more comprehensive than the earlier Smalltalks, but was an incredible tour. I also actually learned Javascript by studying Lively. That was a smaller system but much more dense. Both were wonderful experiences and had a dramatic impact on my understanding and thinking. I think I might revisit the Smalltalk books. I skimmed through them years ago without any context, so they were just interesting ideas, but I suspect I might get a richer perspective looking at them from this vantage point.
David
David A. Smith
Twitter: @Croquet
Skype: inventthefuture
On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 3:42 PM, Alan Kay wrote:
Hi John
However, it's interesting to consider that Smalltalk itself, mostly thanks to Dan, was a kind of a tour of itself. I still remember with great pleasure reading through the 185 page printout of the entire Smalltalk-76 system. Larry Tesler -- not in Smalltalk -- documented the 50 or so classes in a nice write up. And there was Dan's POPL paper with a really great overview.
The later Blue Book and follow-ons for Smalltalk-80, driven by Adele, were another extremely comprehensive "projection" of the system, capped off with the virtual machine in itself.
To me, both of these were extremely good things for deep researchers to do.
One of the things that the Smalltalkers somehow couldn't get interested in -- or see -- was the *media nature* of Smalltalk, and this lagged way behind, to the point that when enough memory was available for a "curriculum layer", there was not enough media support to do it. And not enough of this got worked on and done at Disney in Squeak.
On the other hand, it was interesting to see the little it took to get the revived Smalltalk-78 to be more comprehensive than PowerPoint -- that was a real pleasure to participate in! To really do the right thing, Class Project would have to be rewritten, but that would be less of a chore in that small system.
This is still something that is worthwhile pondering. The kinds of people who can make a "Molecular Biology of the Cell" book are rare, and none of us were that person. But it seems to me that a system should be prepared for doing comprehensive media, and making media easily, to accommodate "special authors" as they appear. A curriculum is literally a path through an environment, and it's tantalizing that Smalltalk was an environment.
We almost did something great with STEPS and Frank, and I think it could have accommodated "pathfinders and trailblazers".
Food for thought!
Cheers
Alan
From: John Maloney <****************>
To: Alan Kay <****************>
Cc: Daniel Ingalls <****************>; Ted Kaehler <****************>; Yoshiki Ohshima <****************>; Alessandro Warth <****************>; David Smith <****************>; Bert Freudenberg <****************>; Aran Lunzer <****************>; Kim Rose <****************>; Ken Perlin <****************>; Bret Victor <****************>
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2017 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: Somethng we've never mustered the energy to do in a stronger context ....
Wow, that's quite an undertaking!
The author has produced over 400 days/episodes already and they expect to reach over 600 by the end. Although I'm good at sustained coding efforts (like creating Squeak, Morphic, and Etoys), I can't imagine building something like Squeak while at the same time making videos to explain every single step and every line of code. For one thing, my process is not nearly as linear and well-organized at the process presented in Handmade Hero -- I often get things wrong the first time and have to go back and redesign earlier stages.
I agree, a well-made sequence of episodes like this to explain math, physics, chemistry, or biology would be really amazing!
The PSSC physics video series took a different approach. Those videos were intended to augment a physics course, not be a course by themselves, so they didn't need to cover everything. Instead, they highlight and explore selected topics. Vi's videos are similar -- they explore selected math topics in way that brings mathematics to life and makes it exciting. You might call this the "cherry picking" approach to educational videos.
I admire the effort involved in creating a detailed, step-by-step progression such as "Handmade Hero", but I can't imagine ever doing something like that myself. I makes me tired and depressed to even think about it. On the other hand, I can imagine taking a "cherry picking" approach to explaining ideas.
-- John
> On Dec 11, 2017, at 4:22 AM, Alan Kay <****************> wrote:
>
> Check this out (by way of Hamish Todd by way of John Maloney)
>
> Annotated Episode Guide | Handmade Hero
>
> Annotated Episode Guide | Handmade Hero
> The Annotated Episode Guide for Handmade Hero. Find all episodes so far annotated by Matt 'Miblo' Mascar...
>
> Cheers
>
> Alan