Top all-time · #952
Mark Guzdial
Personal blog · computinged.wordpress.comprogrammingculture
Mark Guzdial writes Computing Ed Research, a personal blog at computinged.wordpress.com about programming and culture. Since 2009, 69 different Hacker News readers have linked it 123 times, most often “Introducing GP: A General Purpose Block Language”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-19, and you can follow it by feed.
How do people understand computing, and how can we improve that understanding?
Most-linked posts?
- Introducing GP: A General Purpose Block Language4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-06-13
- Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-04-15
- Computer Science was supposed to be taught to everyone, and wasn’t about a job3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-11-27
- Stanford is moving from using Java to JavaScript for their intro CS course3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-04-21
- A theory of transfer of knowledge from programming2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-07-08
- /2010/09/11/moti-asks-objects-never-well-hardly-ever/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-25
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-05
- Dijkstra’s Truths about Computing Education Aren’t2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-07
- Matlab and APL: Meeting Cleve Moler (2012)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-19
What Hacker News says?
Adding one more: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/introducing-gp-... "GP is a new blocks-based programming language being developed by John Maloney (most well-known for developing Scratch), Jens Mönig (developer of Snap!), and Yoshiki Ohshima (one of the developers of Squeak EToys) in Alan Kay’s group. They are all part of the new partnership between Alan Kay and Y-Combinator Research: HARC (Human Advanc…
Comment linking /2016/06/13/introducing-gp-a-general-purpose-block-language/
on “Seymour Papert has died”Submitted Stanford CS enrollment increase "downright scary" as a story · 186 points
HN discussionCover topics around software development, math, programming languages, and academia: http://stuffwithstuff.com/ https://ericlippert.com/ http://thume.ca/archive.html https://medium.com/@mdwdotla https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/posts https://computinged.wordpress.com/ https://blog.acolyer.org/ https://blog.sigplan.org/blog/ https://blog.paranoidcoding.com/ https://blog.regehr.org/ https://eli.thegreenplace.net/ h…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch as a story · 158 points
HN discussionActually it's true. Apple removed Scratch from their app-store because "Apple wants to focus on consuming media using these devices, not producing media."[1] [1] http://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/apple-removes-sc...
Comment linking /2010/04/15/apple-removes-scratch-from-ipadiphoneitouch/
on “Codify: native coding environment for iPad”Submitted Inverse Live Coding: A practice for learning web development as a story · 127 points
HN discussionI'm extremely aware of Alan Kay's statement, as well as the foundations of the actor model. The reality is that today that is not what OOP has become, and Alan Kay would agree. > that suggests we got OOP wrong, very wrong. Alan Kay very clearly states that people "got it wrong" and that OOP was supposed to be about messaging. ie: He intended for it to be one thing, but it isn't that thing. > I'm sorry that I long ag…
Comment linking /2010/09/11/moti-asks-objects-never-well-hardly-ever/
on “Give me back my monolith (2019)”Submitted Observing demos hurts learning, and confusion is a sign of understanding as a story · 82 points
HN discussion> Erlang with its active objects seems to me to fit precisely his description. He's said exactly this [0]: > We didn’t even do all of the idea at PARC. Many of Carl Hewitt’s Actors ideas which got sparked by the original Smalltalk were more in the spirit of OOP than the subsequent Smalltalks. Significant parts of Erlang are more like a real OOP language the the current Smalltalk, and certainly the C based languages…
Comment linking /2010/09/11/moti-asks-objects-never-well-hardly-ever/
on “Soup – Alan Kay on Objects”Submitted Is learning to program inherently hard? as a story · 62 points
HN discussionArmstrong's death was one of the few that I was sort of hit by, despite not knowing him personally. I've watched so many of his talks, read as much as I could from him, and I've generally found him to be quite an inspiration and seemingly a great guy. More on the point of the article, it's sort of fun to think about the fact that "OO Sucks" is sort of ironic given Alan Kay's initial description of OO was closer to a…
Comment linking /2010/09/11/moti-asks-objects-never-well-hardly-ever/
on “Why OO Sucks by Joe Armstrong (2000)”Submitted Computer Science was supposed to be taught to everyone, and wasn’t about a job as a story · 60 points
HN discussion> 'Actor model' but it ended up being very misunderstood when implemented in C++, Java, etc, Yap here it is right from the horse's mouth, so to speak: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/moti-asks-objec... (see comments history) --- If you are doing “simulated data structure programming” rather than object oriented programming. One of my original motivations for trying to invent OOP was to eliminate imperat…
Comment linking /2010/09/11/moti-asks-objects-never-well-hardly-ever/
on “Why Erlang looks like it does”Submitted Stanford is moving from using Java to JavaScript for their intro CS course as a story · 51 points
HN discussionI think this is exactly how Apple sees it. Look at the specific language from the SDK agreement: "Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple’s built-in WebKit framework." This doesn't forbid third-party interpreters; what it really does…
Comment linking /2010/04/15/apple-removes-scratch-from-ipadiphoneitouch/
on “Google Chrome now works on iOS”Submitted How high school students start thinking about code as a story · 51 points
HN discussionAlan Kay doesn't consider "remote procedure calls" to be "object oriented programming". http://mythz.servicestack.net/blog/2013/02/27/the-deep-insig... mythz> On RPC, and how it distorts developers mindsets in architecting and building systems: Kay> The people who liked objects as non-data were smaller in number, and included myself, Carl Hewitt, Dave Reed and a few others – pretty much all of this group were from t…
Comment linking /2010/09/15/alan-kay-on-motis-objects-ever-cacm-article/
on “Alan Kay and Missing Messages”Submitted Lisp and Smalltalk are dead: It’s C all the way down as a story · 35 points
HN discussionI think you're barking up the wrong class hierarchy, trying to reformulate objects, messages and parameters as abstract data types. Alan Kay has been quite clear about his opinion that “Abstract Data Types” is not OOP. http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay... >One of the things I should have mentioned is that there were two main paths that were catalysed by Simula. The early one (just by accid…
Comment linking /2010/09/15/alan-kay-on-motis-objects-ever-cacm-article/
on “Alan Kay and Missing Messages”Submitted Purpose-First Programming as a story · 29 points
HN discussion"Computer Science was always supposed to be taught to everyone, and it wasn’t about getting a job: A historical perspective" https://computinged.wordpress.com/2021/11/26/computer-scienc...
Comment linking /2021/11/26/computer-science-was-always-supposed-to-be-taught-to-everyone-but-not-about-getting-a-job-a-historical-perspective/
on “Citizen developers are rapidly becoming the vanguard of corporate digitisation”Submitted Alan Kay on Hoping That “Simple” is not “Too Simple” as a story · 29 points
HN discussionthe man who invented MATLAB, Cleve Moler said: [I’ve] always seen MATLAB as “portable APL”. [1] …why the downvoting? [1] - https://computinged.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/matlab-and-apl-...
Comment linking /2012/06/14/matlab-and-apl-meeting-cleve-moler/
on “Comparing Parallel Functional Array Languages: Programming and Performance”Submitted Georgia Tech adapts to increased cheating among CS students as a story · 15 points
HN discussionIf you want to learn more about research into broadening participation in CS in the US, I recommend Mark Guzdial's blog and publications: https://computinged.wordpress.com/ This is a good talk from Mark about his (and others') work: "Meeting the needs for a computationally literate society" (2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk9y09mmL9M
Comment linking /
on “Female, minority students took AP computer science in record numbers”Submitted When Women Stopped Coding in 1980’s: As we repeat the same mistakes as a story · 7 points
HN discussionA useful counterpoint: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2020/12/07/dijkstras-truth...
Comment linking /2020/12/07/dijkstras-truths-about-computing-education-are-mostly-wrong/
on “On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (1988) [pdf]”Submitted CS was supposed to be taught to everyone, and it wasn't about getting a job as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Making Software, Oram & Wilson Going to quote one of the authors (Hakan Erdogmus) from here: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/making-software... "I am one of the authors of the TDD chapter. Ours was a review of existing some 30+ studies of TDD. Yes, Nachi’s experiments (the MSR study mentioned above) were included. BTW, I wouldn’t have concluded that “tdd doesn’t work” based on our data. Rather, I woul…
Comment linking /2010/11/01/making-software-tdd-doesnt-work-architecting-is-mixed-scripting-is-great/
on “Ask HN: How do you debug your code?”Submitted Stanford CS department updates introductory courses: Java is Gone as a story · 4 points
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