> - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo.
I think the problem is like what happened to "agile" after the manifesto. People took a term with a meaning, and ignored that meaning in promoting their own stuff, thus confusing the terminology and messing up discussion of the concepts.
So their antidote is just preventing the idea from gaining traction in the first place? Like, that will certainly prevent it from being misinterpreted the way Agile has been, but it will also ensure no one can use their idea at all.
They aren't trying to "gain traction" right now. They are nurturing a beautiful little flame of a vision and documenting it for the world to learn from, and possibly be inspired by, along the way -- someday it will be more publicly available, but for now it functions, to the general public, more as art than utility.
The typical themes of things that get posted on HN are not compatible with this idea, which is why it comes across so jarringly to many. They aren't selling, prescribing, recruiting, etc. They are sharing a vision, and to deeply understand and appreciate the vision you have to get your hands dirty and do some digging into what they've prepared for us to see thus far.
I think the problem is like what happened to "agile" after the manifesto. People took a term with a meaning, and ignored that meaning in promoting their own stuff, thus confusing the terminology and messing up discussion of the concepts.