What this is#
Mindstorms is a living resource about the ideas of programming and computing — not the frameworks of the month, but the deep, durable, sometimes half-forgotten ideas that gave us the field and might yet remake it.
It takes its name from Seymour Papert's 1980 book Mindstorms, which argued that a computer could be something far more interesting than a machine for delivering answers: it could be an object to think with, a medium for powerful ideas, a place where a child — or anyone — learns by building.
That conviction runs through everyone you'll meet here. Alan Kay calls the computer a metamedium. Douglas Engelbart wanted to augment the human intellect. J.C.R. Licklider imagined humans and machines in symbiosis. Ken Iverson showed that notation is a tool of thought. Bret Victor keeps asking why we've settled for so little. The thread connecting them is simple and radical: computing as a tool for thinking.
How to read it#
There's no required order. Three good ways in:
- By topic. The six topics are doors into the same room. Pick the one that pulls on you — Papert & constructionism, Alan Kay & Smalltalk, the history or future of programming, computing as a tool for thinking, or languages & paradigms.
- By essay. The essays are longer pieces that follow one idea or person carefully. If you only read one, read Mindstorms at Forty.
- By idea. The idea encyclopedia has short, linkable definitions of the recurring concepts — constructionism, message passing, late binding, code as data, and more. Good for following your curiosity sideways.
There's also a timeline of computing ideas and a reading & watching list of the primary sources — the books, papers, and talks in the words of the people who had the ideas.
Why it matters#
It is easy to learn to program today and never once be told that almost everything about how we program was, not long ago, an open question — and that many of the best answers were proposed, demonstrated, and then quietly set aside.
The most dangerous thought you can have as a creative person is to think you know what you're doing. — Bret Victor
This site is an argument against thinking we know what we're doing. The point is not nostalgia. It's that the old visions were bigger than what we built, and they're still available. Computing is young. The most interesting ideas may still be ahead of us — or behind us, waiting to be picked back up.
Welcome. Start wherever you like.