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In Search of Tomorrow

Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS)
Lectures
YouTube
9 HN users recommended this lecture6 months2015–2018 score 6.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN keeps pointing to it as a thoughtful vision of programming for non-programmers and as background on Eve's motivations.

Chris Granger, creator of Light Table and the Eve language, gives a Berkeley data science lecture on what computation and programming might look like in ten years. He covers the path that led to Eve and ends with demos.

“very good talk about the background of eve” (HN, 2017)

1 strong recommendations · 9 recommendations · 4 citations · Lectures · intermediate · partly dated

14 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@kybernetikos Oct 2016 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Eve: Programming designed for humans
I absolutely loved the semantic wiki stuff that was shown towards the end of the "In search of tomorrow" video. This seems fairly different to that system. Is there a write up/talk about why you changed? Is there anything like that semantic wiki thing available for me to use? [this video]
Semantic wiki demo near the end
@dangoor Dec 2015 Recommends
on HN thread The Sad State of Personal Knowledgebases
Chris Granger's latest experiments with Eve (github.com/witheve) look surprisingly like a semi-structured personal knowledge system. Take a look at the last 15 minutes or so of this video for a demo: [this video] (the whole video is interesting for the evolution of it)
Eve demo resembles a semi-structured personal knowledge system
@lewisl9029 Dec 2015 Recommends
on HN thread The Sad State of Personal Knowledgebases
I just came across this a few days ago on HN: [this video] [link] Eve, the new "programming" tool developed by Chris Granger of Light Table fame, looks absolutely amazing for this use case. I personally can't wait to try it out.
Eve programming tool by Chris Granger
@giblet Dec 2015 Recommends
on HN thread Why does programming suck?
A talk by Chris Granger in Dec 2015 trying to answer "What does programming look like in 10 years?" was interesting. < [this video] A recent iteration < [this video] looks wiki-like.
What programming might look like in 10 years
@cmaury Mar 2016 Recommends
on HN thread My Journey From Blindness to Building a Fully Conversational User Interface
There are a lot of professional developers who are blind. They use accessible IDEs paired with a Screen reader. Here is a good description: [link] In the future, I think there is a lot of potential for pairing a Conversational UI and a natural language programming...language. Eve looks really promising, and could change the way that everyone writes software, and not just the blind: [link] Here is a demo: [this video]
Eve demo, possibly changing how everyone writes software
@michaelwww Mar 2016 Recommends
on HN thread Stencila – Spreadsheet-like live reactive programming environment
This article reminded me of an interesting video by Chris Granger, co-author of the Light Table code editor, titled "In Search of Tomorrow: What does programming look like in 10 years?" He's designing a visual/code block hybrid editor. [this video]
Chris Granger on programming in 10 years, visual/code hybrid editor
@lewisl9029 May 2016 Recommends
on HN thread HARC
Eve [1] is one project I know of that has been trying to tackle this very difficult problem. The project is led by Chris Granger, whom you might know from his work on the Light Table IDE [2]. They released a video last year that showcased some iterations of their prototypes and I found them to be very innovative and promising: [this video] [1] [link] [2] [link]
Prototype iterations of Eve, innovative and promising
@rafaelferreira Oct 2016 Recommends
on HN thread Eve: Programming designed for humans
Read more
Seeing Eve's development out in the open is inspiring. Many of the commenters are coming from positions of extreme skepticism towards new approaches to programming, probably justified by the history of the field, but I'd recommend to spend some more time looking into the research idbknox and his team have been conducting (see [this video] , for instance) and how much they have iterated based on user experimentation. A few questions come to mind now: 1 - This new demo, with the messaging app sample, and references to "my pm wants this or that" seems to point a change in positioning, from targeting non-programmers to professional programmers. Is this accurate? 2 - Is there a plan to integrate the grid-style or the adlibs style UI into this new iteration? 3 - If non-programmers are still a target, it seems to me that the ease of importing data from external sources would important to reach broad usage. Any research here? 4 - Html and css might be a hurdles for new users, any way Eve will help on this front? (edited for formatting)
Research behind Eve, iterated from user experiments
@anotheryou May 2017 Recommends
on HN thread Esoteric programming paradigms
Will Eve ever take off? I like the thoughts behind it. [this video] very good talk about the background of eve. When he finally talks about eve you might want to switch to a more recent talk about it.
Good background talk on Eve's motivations
@seltzered_ Apr 2018 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?
Read more
#Softwarish - I'm biased a bit more towards interface development: greg wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True - [link] steve wittens - making webgl dance - the title is deceptive, it's in some ways a visual crash course in linear algebra - [link] glenn vanderburg - software engineering doesn't work - [link] chris granger - in search of tomorrow - [this video] alan kay - tribute to ted nelson at intertwingled fest - [link] bret victor - this is already mentioned but if I had to pick one it'd be 'the humane representation of thought' - [link] #Hardwarish: saul griffith - soft, not solid: beyond traditional hardware engineering - [link] deb chachra - Architectural Biology and Biological Architectures - [link] #Getting more meta in technology and history: James Burke - Connections
Listed among favorite tech talks

Citations, criticism and jokes

@jamii Feb 2016 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2016)
Read more
Location: London Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: Yes Résumé/CV: [link] Email: [email protected] I was previously at Eve, designing languages, databases and query compilers aimed at end-user programming (demoed in [this video] ). Before that I spent several years consulting, bringing basic CS and performance knowledge to companies who need it. I don't have strong opinions on what I want to do next except that I would like to branch out into another field, either by learning on the job or by studying part-time. I'm particularly interested in cognitive science and group collaboration. [link] [link] [link]
Demo of Eve's end-user programming work
@cmontella Nov 2018 Cites it
on HN thread Against the Current: What We Learned from Eve
That's a good suggestion. I'll do a little makeshift one here :) Blog posts are mostly here: [link] and a couple here: [link] Talks: [link] [link] [link] [this video] [link] Prototypes are collected here: [link] I'll try to make this nicer and put it on our homepage.
Listed among Eve talks

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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