HackerTube.dev

Alternate Reality Kit by Randall Smith at Xerox PARC 1986 (VPRI-0131)

Yoshiki Ohshima (大島芳樹) · 4.1K views · 2016-04-18 · 11:54

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

A 12-minute demo of the Alternate Reality Kit, built by Randall Smith at Xerox PARC in 1986. It is a simulated physical world in which users manipulate objects and program by direct interaction.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as early evidence that visual and interactive programming can go well beyond wire diagrams, in a Smalltalk and Alan Kay tradition.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2018–2021

Topics

GUI, HCI & interface historyHistory of computingCreative coding & generative art
Search by tags
xerox parcvisual programmingsmalltalkalan kaydirect manipulation

What people said

rgrau · 2018-10 · Strong recommendation

Yoshiki Ohshima regularly posts interesting "new" videos on his youtube channel[1]. Not only Alan Kay's talks but content produced in PARC back in the day, or relevant people around that environment. If you need a less abstract teaser before getting into the talks and "philosophy" part of the game, here's a demo of something called "Alternate Reality Kit"[2] back in 1986. Brace yourselves. 1. [LINK] 2. [VIDEO]

Read the original HN comment ↗
romaniv · 2021-02 · Reference

In 1986 people wanted to make real programming more like a computer game: [VIDEO] Today, when we have much more computational resources, I'm reading this article about representing Factorio as static text with compiler checks. Something somewhere is off.

Read the original HN comment ↗
gambler · 2019-07 · Reference

Sounds more like "the challenge of using a mish-mash of non-integrated tools with no interface". Developers could definitively solve this by moving away from 70+ year old abstractions (files, terminal) towards things more in line with Smalltalk ideas. But I guess it's better to make thousands of beginners suffer each year, instead of admitting that the current way of doing things is conceptually flawed and outdated. [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] (And no, there is nothing special about copy-pasting commands and Unix pipelines that cannot be easily recreated in UI if the UI is designed to be programmable. )

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Yoshiki Ohshima (大島芳樹), played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources