[masgis]

Bret Victor speaks so idealistically it's difficult to disagree with his vision, but in reality he's a radicalized, scrappy cult leader. His ideas sound super cool but they're impractical - that's why nobody can make them work. We're delusional for worshiping him.

https://christophlocher.com/notes/ethnographic-research-on-d...

[keeganpoppen]

wow i was really primed to hate this article and this take because i, for lack of better terminology, genuinely view Bret Victor as an idol of mine. but i guess that is the thing with idolatry… to be clear to anyone who doesn’t care to read the article (understandable): there’s nothing untoward or unseemly, just a research group that is clearly lost, and Bret as BFDL not being able to “save” it. i will say that the other researchers come off as being pretty soft and useless, but that obviously does reflect back on the group’s raison d’etre and thus, by extension, its leader. like, imagine being recruited to a research group by Bret fucking Victor and being like “nah, i don’t want to work on anything useful, and if i can’t do exactly what i want to do, i quit”. i say this all, despite appearances, with the utmost respect for all those principals, who i have stalked on github, X, etc. to an unreasonable degree out of a pure, assuredly naïve desire to get more bits from people who i consider to be doing the so-called “Lord’s Work”… the people they brought on absolutely are legit enough to have earned the right to not genuflect to anyone, but… where’s all the idealistic belief in building something better for tomorrow that they all portend to care about, from their own words? i don’t want to get political, and won’t, but… it feels like the most self-centered take on idealism since… aw shucks, yesterday… it’s my fault for putting these incredibly brilliant people on a pedestal, but i still find the whole thing incredibly disappointing, as someone who, well… idolizes them. and i would rather be disappointed than chastened and cynical— the world has PLENTY of that to go around, and i still believe in the power of the intellect to transcend this kind of bullshit, this case notwithstanding.

[kragen]

A cult is usually what it takes to turn impractical ideas into practical ones. This link is great, thanks!

[ModernMech]

I think you're 100% about this, but we have to define "impractical". If we take it to mean "the things he shows will never be how we develop software in the future" I agree, to the extent that what he shows is his vision of working, and it doesn't seem he likes to do the kind of work people get paid wages/salaries to do.

The thing though about "nobody can make them work" is that there's really not funding to do so, because corporations don't really see a payout on the other side. So is it "impractical" or just "of no interest to corporations"? Because with AI, we see what happens when corporations think there is a giant payday on the other side. Somehow "unlock our human potential through better ergonomic design of technology" doesn't open wallets but "replace your entire dev team with a robot" causes an endless tsunami of cash. One is "impractical" and the other is "our new reality". I'd say as far as feasibility goes, the former or more practical than the latter, but as far as fundability goes, the latter is more practical than the former.

If I'm going to take away anything from what Victor has said over the years, it's what the article starts off saying, that his...

  vision is rooted in the idea that the computer revolution of the ’70s and early ’80s was cut short, primarily by premature com­mer­cia­li­za­tion. While the computer as a medium was still unfolding its potential, and way before it could do so entirely, it was solidified into commercial products, thereby stifling its free growth. Once corporations had built their businesses on the ideas developed so far, they were only interested in incremental change that could easily be integrated into the products, rather than revolutionary new ideas.

I think that's 100% true by construction, and we can see that in the languages that have risen to the top, which have all been molded for use by corporations for corporate purposes. In this case "impracticable" means "not suitable for corporate use", and it's simply not true that programming languages are only practical if corporations can use them profitably, because there are so many other purposes for programming languages.

And so I think that's the reason for the culty vibes, because without htem he wouldn't be able to do what he does. If he sold it in more grounded terms -- fundamental HCI research -- he can't get funded. So he talks in terms of human revolutions and then he gets some true believers and effective altruism people to open their wallets, get some of those SV devs to spread some of their big tech money around to causes they care about, because they're the ones who have to ultimately deal with the bad programming UX we've built for ourselves.

And that's what Bret Victor is ultimately advocating: better UX for devs, mostly through observability. That's not so radical or impractical. His work has to be because otherwise he doesn't have a job... moreover, he'd have to get a job. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a good point.