Alan Kay’s reading list

http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp

by jacobolus • 17 years ago

137 43 17 years ago

jacobolus3• 17 years ago

I prefer this to any of the similar lists I’ve found around the web (e.g. the one discussed at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663662 ). Nearly everything from this list that I am familiar with is wonderfully insightful.

michael_nielsen3• 17 years ago

This was posted 18 months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=92007 ). No problem with a repost - this is an absolutely wonderful list of books - just mentioning it because there are a couple of interesting comments on the earlier posting.

michael_nielsen3• 17 years ago

It's striking how broadly engaged Kay is with the world. He finds ideas, problems and inspiration everywhere. To know how to write a program, all you need to know is APIs, algorithms, and tools. But to design breakthrough software - to know what program to write - it obviously helps to also be broadly engaged with the world.

jacobolus3• 17 years ago

Some part of this is that Kay is more concerned with cognition and learning, and especially in children, than he is with computer programming as such. Programming happens to be a uniquely exciting way to engage with mathematics, and computers happen to be wonderful tools in many types of learning, so he has devoted of his career to inventing programming environments and interfaces for kids.

Because all programming – even to some extent pure numerical algorithm design/optimization – is an exercise in communication and human-usable abstraction, most programmers should probably spend more time on developmental psychology than they do currently.

david927• 17 years ago

I think he understands many things we'll only recognize much later, and one of these is that kids need clarity. (Not simplicity; people talk down to kids all the time.) And clarity is orthogonality, it's structure, it's everything we need in our funny little industry and nothing we have.

There are 20 people I admire in this field and the first seven are Alan Kay.

dca• 17 years ago

I find it also striking how long he's been like that. He's truly an icon.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

One thing I've been pondering lately, is the more general purpose of reading books.

I used to read quite a lot of books, library books and personal books. Mostly fiction and popular science, I hesitate to admit (not hesitate to read them, just hesitate to admit because they are 'lesser' books). There are a lot of things that I couldn't tell you whether I have read or not, let alone what the main points were. Now I mostly read online and read pages every day that are forgotten within hours.

Every day or two I find somethings really interesting and hold onto those ideas for a while, but they fade. How many great ideas did I read from Kathy Sierra? Lots... I think. As long as you don't ask what they were.

Am I really doing this just to feel good about saying "I've read that!"? Am I reading for the occasional "ooh, I read something interesting about that once... where was it?" feeling of contribution?

Am I missing something fundamental about reading and remembering that other people get - ought I to be studying books instead of skimming them? Ought I to remember more of the content?

Am I really a better person for having read more books? For having been exposed to certain ideas?

jacobolus3• 17 years ago

Personally, I find that I remember much better with a pen in hand. If you've really engaged with a work – scribbled all over the margins, written a review, discussed it with your friends – you're much less likely to forget either its insights or your own reactions.

michael_nielsen3• 17 years ago

I wrote a little flashcard script that lets me enter and later test myself on facts. If I get the answer to a question right, the delay before a repeat of the question increases. If I get the answer wrong, the delay decreases. When I read something I want to remember, I just enter a bundle of relevant questions into the program. It's helped a lot with retaining knowledge.

emmett• 17 years ago

Reading books is mostly something you do for entertainment, like going to the movies, or eating nice food. There's nothing wrong with that! It's very pleasurable, and occasionally useful. But generally most reading doesn't make you a better person, any more than watching opera or other "high" art does.

rodrigo2• 17 years ago

Thats sounds shallow. If I have a great meal or watch a good play in a theather or any other "high" art, and im able to pay atention and find interesting stuff in the work,I engage with the sensitive side and that alone, makes me a better person.

frossie• 17 years ago

Am I really a better person for having read more books? For having been exposed to certain ideas?

Yes. Even if you can't directly recall what you have read, if you understood it while you were reading it you would have internalised some of the world view, if not the blow-by-blow account.

As somebody else replied, discussing it with your friends (or, making friends of the people who would discuss such books with you) is a great way of integrating the ideas into your thinking.

As to the list: Anybody interested in reading Arthur Koestler (and he is really worth reading) might want to start with The Sleepwalkers. It is a very readable account of the development of science - if you like it you will be motivated to delve into some of his other work.

Radix• 17 years ago

I was going to say this. Specifically that this is particularly true when you are young. I recall discussing Atlas Shrugged with a friend not long ago. I can see that book permanently influencing someone's world view. (For better or worse, positively or negatively, I cannot say.)

justlearning• 17 years ago

Yes. Even if you can't directly recall......not the blow-by-blow account.

Thank you! I believe this is applicable to everything that is related to the dominating senses -see/hear. So i try my hardest to narrow my information overload. I have accepted the fact, that i can't know everything - politics..knowing why situation in iran came to be,why this vocal outburst doesn't happen in other places...to feeling like the dumbest guy after looking into google research papers.

rodrigo2• 17 years ago

Agree. Last week I was discussing with a friend about the significance of certain writer (wich I read in highschool and havent reread again) and I was surprised I could come up with some significant hindsigths about his work. I guess I internalized and talking about it years later, at the ligth of many other things I have read and received, I was able to articulate about it.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

This is very true, the important thing about reading is in actually doing it. It is probably more helpful if you can remember a fair amount of detail on the book, but the act of reading will certainly improve not only your understanding of ideas but your ability to read and write too.

I remember reading a psychological study on musicians and that they can selectively hear their favourite instruments in a piece. Personally as a bass guitarist I can relate, in fact I have a problem listening to music without good bass playing.

I believe this will happen with all artistic talents including reading and writing. The more you read, the more it will increase all of you abilities related to it. I can barely remember any songs on bass because I haven't played since before I moved country, but I'm still highly proficient at playing.

Stephen King once stated that there is no point in writing if you don't read and from my understanding, virtually all writers are well read and it largely doesn't matter what you read, just that you read. Hopefully scientists will come along and prove this sentiment some day as it's almost universally held in writing circles.

So I would say with a certainty to the OP that with a margin of doubt so small that it would be too big to write out here, that you truly are a better person for having read more books. Not only have you likely enlightened yourself to a broader world view, but you have likely also distanced yourself further from the unpunctuated and grammarless masses. Also, this maybe because of the reading, but you seem quite adept at philosophising so kudos.

absconditus• 17 years ago

You may want to read How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Touchstone-book/dp/06712...

bitwize2• 17 years ago

The best part of How to Read a Book is that when you buy it you get a free book to practice with!

baddox• 17 years ago

Your question is a common one. Literary critics often joke about how critics in general rate James Joyce's "Ulysses" as a top novel, yet "no one has actually read it." The same goes (to a lesser extent) in cinema for "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Alex39176• 17 years ago

What I do to avoid this is whenever I read a book I put a little dash in the margin next to anything that's worth remembering, and then after I finish the book I copy down all these sentences into a mindmap. The means that I've read all the insightful/informative parts at least twice, typed them once, and then have them in a format that makes it really easy to refer back to them.

giardini• 17 years ago

What sort of mindmap do you use?

GHFigs2• 17 years ago

A very lightweight and simple way of improving retention is to re-expose yourself to the ideas. If you're reminded of a book, go flip through it again and read whatever bit strikes you at the moment. Just enough to satiate your interest, but not so much that you feel like you have to re-read the whole thing again. I like this because it's purely interest-driven. The books that plant the most seeds in your mind will draw you back the most, and consequently get the most re-read, and the get the most retention.

Just as you can remember the words to a song better when you hear the tune, you'll find that just reading a few pages of a book can reactiviate your recollection of the rest of the contents, you find that you remember much more than you thought you did. Another nice thing is that by re-exposing yourself to things you read before, you can connect them to things that you've read or ideas you've had since then. Connections that you couldn't have made the first time start forming. This, too, helps retention. It also feels good.

Not all books are great for this. Pop science books, as entertaining and informative as they can be, can frequently be summarized on a napkin without much loss. They tend to have one big idea and lots of details. The ones that work best are books packed with ideas, the ones that you finish on first reading knowing that you haven't fully wrapped your head around.

Incidentally, all of the books on Kay's list that I have read happen to be of this kind. I think that bodes well for the rest.

jhancock• 17 years ago

7 or 8 years ago I read the Book "In the Pond" - Ha Jin. Its a story of a Chinese man that pushes against society and gets his butt handed to him countless times. While reading it, I didn't appreciate the subtle wisdom I would gain from many years since of reflecting on it while living in China.

10ren2• 17 years ago

For me, it's a little like feeding coral, or having a rich environment for enzymes to operate on: if my thinking is ready for particular new insight, it's great if that idea comes along. It then becomes a part of my thinking. Similarly, if I'm working on a problem, I often get insight from other activities, including reading.

Reading well-written books and essays influences the way I express myself, unconsciously.

I also think it keeps the mind supple, to be able to absorb new perspectives. Perhaps even more important, is to be reminded that they are things I don't know, and didn't even suspect (the particular things aren't so important, just feeling of not knowing as much as I thought.)

Alex39176• 17 years ago

Has anyone here actually read Piaget? I've heard that he was such a bad writer that even his closest disciples often had no idea what he was talking about. I'm tempted to read these books, but on the other hand I'm worried it will make it even harder to understand his ideas.

omouse• 17 years ago

Here you go:

http://books.google.com/books?id=jJZ7aWY4tIcC&printsec=f...

Some pages you can read to see if you understand his writing.

Alex39176• 17 years ago

Thanks for the link. Yeah, it's even worse than I'd imagined. I think I'll stick to just reading Duckworth's summaries of his ideas for now.

b-man• 17 years ago

If you want an advice, read Seymour Papert's articles and books (http://www.papert.org/works.html, also take a look at http://learning.media.mit.edu/content/publications/EA.Piaget...)

Papert's style is very accessible, and he was, at least in my view (and in Piaget's view) the guy who grok his ideas the most.

Alex39176• 17 years ago

Thanks, I'll check these out.

GHFigs2• 17 years ago

I second the recommendation of Papert. The first few chapters of Mindstorms are extremely accessible and probably more relevant to any HN reader than anything direct from Piaget.

dhess• 17 years ago

I'm slowly reading Language and Thought of the Child. The "slowly" part is my fault, not Piaget's; I think it's excellent and understandable, even if it's a bit verbose.

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

I raised an eyebrow at Piaget too, but mostly because he's been described as on the same level with Freud: he created the field, but that was a long time ago. I haven't read him though, I admit.

bitwize2• 17 years ago

I suspect Kay got into Piaget because he was a fan of Papert.

quizbiz• 17 years ago

Does anyone know of any article/essay length readings that one can read in one sitting of on par quality?

jballanc2• 17 years ago

Oh man...I was totally with him until I saw "Selfish Gene". Please, speaking as an evolutionary biologist, don't read that book. Dawkins oversimplifies the important and complicates the obvious. If you want a good book on an analytical approach to evolution, might I recommend "Evolutionary Dynamics" by Nowak in its place.

10ren2• 17 years ago

The "Selfish Gene" seemed well-written to me, though I'm not an evolutionary biologist. I would appreciate it if you could note down a couple of things he oversimplified or complicated, please.

jballanc2• 17 years ago

Heh... unfortunately, I've been very busy, and a thorough look into everything that's wrong with "Selfish Gene" would require more time than I have. It is well written, and that's one of the problems with the book, and Dawkins in general. That is, many people are willing to accept his views because they are well written and do not take the time (or have the background) to question their scientific validity.

For starters, very early on Dawkins acknowledges the current lack of consensus as to the exact definition of a "gene" (i.e. does it include promoter/enhancer/other regulatory sequences? should each polymorphism count as one gene? or do we group them together? and if so where, in the continuum of small differences between "genes" do we draw the line?). His proposed solution is to take as a gene any combination of genetic elements which gives rise to an expressed trait.

He then expands on this basic definition to describe how it leads to genes which are "selfish". That is, they are interested only in their own continuance, and so the traits they code for will be optimized around this goal. Unfortunately, this is dangerously close to circular logic. You see, the physical traits that appear in organisms rarely have a simple one-to-one correspondence with a particular subset of the genome. Effects such as epistasis, where the action of one gene masks the effect of another, nullify Dawkins' simplistic definition.

Or, if you would have it another way, genes which have epistatic effects would need to be included in with the original "gene" according to Dawkins' definition. Unfortunately, the network effects that give rise to higher plants and animals would eventually necessitate including the entire genome of an organism in one "Dawkins gene", making the unit of selection not the gene, as Dawkins would have it, but the individual.

As for topics which he over-complicates, the first that comes to mind is kin selection. Admittedly, I don't think his over-complication is intentional, but rather his exploration of the topic is hindered by his presumption that genes are selfish. In fact, kin selection can arise in evolving individuals without the need for the concept of a "gene" at all! Rather, any evolving individual which evolves in a mixed population will eventually acquire various kin selection traits.

As I said at the start, I'm not surprised that Dawkins' ideas are so commonly held as true. He is well written, and most of the work that would refute his claims is usually presented in language inaccessible to most laypeople.

steveeq1• 17 years ago

Read Lateral Thinking. I saw it on his list and read it. Very good for teaching you how to think outside the box.

gabeybaby• 17 years ago

There goes my next four weekends. Damn you!

Alan Kay’s reading list

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