For a beginner all the activities in a problem space are loose ends.
Who does not remember driving a car for the first time,
All these things you have to do together.
And now you drive a car, talk to your friends in the car, wave to that
walking lady..
Most of your loose ends of the beginning are now integrated in patterns,
lots of them even subconsious:
- Oops are we already here..
- With which hand do you control the direction-lights, yes try to remember
that.
- If you drive a not automatic car: which foot do you use for the very
imprtant break?

Having lower things organised in patterns, makes room for higher or other
skills. Handy users can even do more in these situations: Mister Bean going
to the dentist is my favorite.

Visual cues, like a well designed GUI can be an extra help, but a GUI or
Morph that
interferes with the overall design is burning down that profit: It forces
you to think again about the GUI concpet: That's one of the reasons people
like Squeak to it in the GUI the can dream.

But what is a good design environment for a beginner, can be a burden for a
more experienced one: And who decides when you are crossing that border
line.  (In the past we thought that in the final GUI AI would coordinate
this.)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay at squeakland.org]
> Sent: maandag 29 oktober 2001 8:31
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: Re: Lots of concurrency
> 
> 
> If one is actually playing *music* when playing Bach on the pipe 
> organ, than one is indeed thinking deeply about all the parts at 
> once, how they intertwine and what they might "mean", both separately 
> and in combination. Same when one is improvising in counterpoint. 
> Same, if one is sight reading and trying to have real music flow out. 
> I'm afraid that one really does think about these in parallel 
> combination (as I said, very much like watching a theatrical 
> production with multiple actors on the stage, but sonically). It's 
> learnable, and lots of people have learned how. I believe that many 
> advanced thinking "skills" have quite a bit in common with all this. 
> You can learn how to have multiple "thinkers" working on different 
> aspects of ideas, all together.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Alan
> 
> ----
> At 11:05 PM +0000 10/28/01, Gary McGovern wrote:
> >Hello Alan,
> >I have to pull you up on something here. A person playing 
> keyboard, driving
> >a car and so on doesn't always think about what they are 
> doing. Often it is
> >trained into the body or mind or whatever through repetition 
> and practice
> >and maybe in a linear fashion.
> >Regards,
> >Gary
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
> >To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
> >Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 4:13 AM
> >Subject: RE: Lots of concurrency
> >
> >
> >>  But Herb didn't play Bach on the pipe organ *or* think 
> about what he
> >>  was doing when driving a car, or even just walking and talking and
> >>  looking and feeling ....  his intellect was "amazing" (in a very
> >>  special sense of that word)...
> >>
> >>  Cheers,
> >>
> >>  Alan
> >>
> >>  -------
> >>
> >>  At 9:46 PM -0400 10/25/01, Mark Guzdial wrote:
> >>  >As far as I know, Herb Simon didn't argue about naturalness of
> >>  >parallelism in programming languages.  Herb Simon was one of the
> >>  >pioneers of cognitive science, and he argued that the mind was
> >>  >single-threaded.  (Simon was also one of the most 
> amazing intellects
> >>  >of our time -- a Nobel prize winner in Economics and a 
> Turing Award
> >>  >winner in computer science)
> >>  >
> >>  >Mark
> >>  >
> >>  >>Fascinating and important questions being debated in 
> this thread; I just
> >>  >>wanted to ask Mark (or anyone else who knows) what the 
> Herb Simon
> >arguments
> >>  >>and evidence in opposition to the "naturalness" of
> >parallelism/concurrency
> >>  >>in programming languages he was referring to.  Perhaps 
> a brief textual
> >>  >>summary of the arguments, and maybe a pointer to the evidence?
> >>  >>
> >>  >> - Jerry Balzano
> >>  >>
> >>  >>At 10:38 AM -0700 10/25/01, Mark Guzdial wrote:
> >>  >>>We're getting into some of my favorite literature, so 
> I wanted to jump
> >in
> >>  >>>here.
> >>  >>>
> >>  >>>>And I think it is just an illusion
> >>  >>>>that this parallelism is only at a low level (e.g. 
> neurons). Read
> >Minsky's
> >>  >>>>Society Theory of Mind ( 
> http://www.media.mit.edu/people/minsky/ ) for
> >>  >>>>example.
> >>  >>>
> >>  >>>But also consider Herb Simon's arguments in opposition 
> -- and Simon
> >>  >>>has a lot more empirical evidence in his favor.  I 
> don't have an
> >>  >>>opinion on which is right yet, but I don't think that this is a
> >>  >>>settled point.
> >>  >>
> >>  >>
> >>  >>
> >>  >>-------------------------
> >>  >>Dr. Gerald J. Balzano
> >>  >>Teacher Education Program
> >>  >>Dept of Music
> >>  >>Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
> >>  >>Cognitive Science Program
> >>  >>UC San Diego
> >>  >>La Jolla, CA 92093
> >>  >>(619) 822-0092
> >>  >>gjbalzano at ucsd.edu
> >>  >
> >>  >--------------------------
> >>  >Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA
> >30332-0280
> >>  >Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
> >>  >Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
> >>  >(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
> >>  >http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
> >>
> >>
> >>  --
> >>
> >>
> >>
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
>