Bret Victor
worrydream.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Bret Victor, an interface designer and researcher, writes essays and builds interactive explorations on programming, design, and learning.
What HN saysCommenters praise it as a model of interactive education, singling out Ladder of Abstraction and Learnable Programming, and recommend his talks on the future of programming.
936HN people shared it
710linked it in comments
350stories submitted
14Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1A brief rant on the future of interaction design (2011)265 people · 1.6K points · first shared 2011 · 300 comments on HN
- 2What can a technologist do about climate change?79 people · 577 points · first shared 2015 · 289 comments on HN
- 3Bret Victor: Learnable Programming69 people · 1.3K points · first shared 2012 · 183 comments on HN
- 4Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction59 people · 1.1K points · first shared 2011 · 72 comments on HN
- 5Magic Ink58 people · 270 points · first shared 2007 · 13 comments on HN
- 6The Early History Of Smalltalk (1993)54 people · 440 points · first shared 2012 · 68 comments on HN
- 7A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design52 people · 1.2K points · first shared 2011 · 150 comments on HN
- 8Tangle is a JavaScript library for creating reactive documents.33 people · 886 points · first shared 2011 · 70 comments on HN
- 9The Future of Programming32 people · 999 points · first shared 2013 · 341 comments on HN
- 10Kill Math32 people · 247 points · first shared 2011 · 108 comments on HN
- 11Alligator Eggs29 people · 466 points · first shared 2009 · 24 comments on HN
- 12No Silver Bullet (1986) [pdf]29 people · 297 points · first shared 2014 · 85 comments on HN
- 13Media for Thinking the Unthinkable27 people · 740 points · first shared 2013 · 78 comments on HN
- 14Explorable Explanations27 people · 11 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 15Worrydream Refs15 people · 155 points · first shared 2014 · 23 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Coeur · 2025-05-09
I love this kind of dynamic web interactive education. The other ones that come to mind are Bret Victor https://worrydream.com/ , Bartosz Ciechanowski https://ciechanow.ski/ , and Nicky Case has a nice page many more at https://explorabl.es/ .
Barrin92 · 2023-07-05
Great to see he's still around. Bret Victor's post on abstraction and his visualization of Strogatz classic paper on networks are two of my favorite pieces posted on the internet.
http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/
http://worrydream.com/#!/ScientificCommunicationAsSequentialArt
ad404b8a372f2b9 · 2022-12-19
All talks by Bret Victor are great, they are listed on his websites but they are more concerned with the future of programming than old languages: http://worrydream.com/
On the topic of language design, there is also this talk by Brian Kernighan which gives good practical advice if you're building a language and talks about his journey with awk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg4U4r_AgJU
anfelor · 2022-11-19
The best attempt at creating a learnable programming language I've seen is this design document by Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming
It is now ten years old but I don't know if it has even been put into practice? To be fair, it would be a lot of work to include all the IDE features and Easylang comes reasonably close to it already. However, if I could recommend one paragraph it is the one on "Recomposition", which is an extremely clear explanation of why functional programming matters for learnable programming.
cloogshicer · 2022-07-19
Mindstorms, by Seymour Papert, is well worth a read. Great book on education. If you like this kind of stuff, you'll also enjoy Bret Victor's Learnable programming [0] and probably all the other stuff he's published over the years.
[0] http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming
Glench · 2021-11-22
Both times I've taken time off without plans have been really transformative for me.
In the first I discovered I had a passion for helping other people learn and ended up working at MIT on the Scratch project and then with Bret Victor (http://worrydream.com) at his research lab, both really amazing opportunities.
In the second I decided to quit tech to become a therapist. You can read about that here: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/
Your mileage may vary.
itsjustmath · 2021-11-22
Bret Victor's 'Brief rant on the future of interaction design' is a worthwhile read on the same subject: http://worrydream.com/#!/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign
> Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.
badassiel · 2021-09-08
It just so happens I was thinking about spatial org just yesterday, that it would be so nice if I can have 'villages' of tabs on a (geographical) Map.
Amazing co-incidence that I woke up to bonsai browser notification!
You might find The Humane Representation of Thought[1] by Bret Victor[2] useful, where he demonstrates by example, how existing tools/software (generally speaking) doesn't utilize all the 'superpowers' that we acquired via evolution.
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[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agOdP2Bmieg
[2]: http://worrydream.com
Edit - grammatical fixes
kubanczyk · 2020-12-25
I recommend http://worrydream.com/#!/quotes by the same author.
I think I accumulated more time re-reading it than any other (single) web page over the years.
samkater · 2020-11-09
The person I immediately think of after reading this is Bret Victor and how I felt after watching his “Stop Drawing Dead Fish” presentation [1]. The presentation was so well thought out, and the concepts follow one another so clearly that you can’t help but think that you are the one having the insights as they are being presented. Plus, the tool be built to create the presentation seems to just feel like magic!
[1] http://worrydream.com/#!/StopDrawingDeadFish
brewzair · 2020-06-21
Neither my idea nor do I think it is impossible to create, but I would love for this tool to exist and don't have the skills yet to make it myself:
http://worrydream.com/#!/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalk
fossuser · 2020-05-21
His website also has some great stuff: http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming
chrisweekly · 2019-09-30
Similar rxn to those talks. Also, if ever someone knew how to write an "evergreen" post (ie, one that holds up over time), it's Bret Victor.
His "Ladder of Abstractions" is a great example:
http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction
reilly3000 · 2019-09-19
Bret Victors talks and essays are well worth consuming. He speaks to the limits of computing within the confines of a small rectangular screen on how people actually think and work. As an architect of iOS UX circa 2006, he's uniquely qualified to discuss UX's impact on behavior. The Humane Representation of Thought is a great place to start: https://vimeo.com/115154289
Dynamicland is the first iteration of what he envisions with "seeing spaces" - interactive, full body computing that allows for humans to create and communicate more effectively whilst using technology that fades into the background.
His personal site is sort of a tour-de-force: http://worrydream.com/
I think anybody who makes things that users use should spend some time there. If you just have time for one thing, check out: http://worrydream.com/#!/LadderOfAbstraction
ThomPete · 2019-07-02
His digital bookshelf is great too
http://worrydream.com/#!/Links
I've read most of those books but when it comes to math/electronics I unfortunately only understand some of it a big fault in my choice of areas to study.
If I could do it over again, math would at least have been as important to me as the arts and philosophy.
I'm always a little envious of people who are able to read the kind of books on his 2015 bookshelf and actually understand them.
Then again we can't be good at everything.
maliker · 2019-02-18
Definitely http://worrydream.com (Bret Victor's home page).
The animated transitions are pretty neat, and were even neater 4 years ago when he first built them, but my favorite part about the site is the way he lays out his whole design philosophy through a number of well-documented projects.
hsrada · 2019-02-08
My favorite is http://worrydream.com/
Here's a twitter thread containing some 'quirky' personal websites, not quite portfolios though.
https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1002674795031326720
OisinMoran · 2019-01-19
The article "What Can a Technologist do about Climate Change?" [0] by Bret Victor is one of the best things I've read in regards to this issue. Not only is it incredibly interesting but it's also massively inspiring.
If climate change doesn't take your fancy as a cause, 80000 Hours have put a lot of research into this list of the world's most pressing problems [1]. Maybe you would like to help tackling one of those.
[0] http://worrydream.com/#!/ClimateChange
[1] https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/
randcraw · 2018-09-23
Definitely worth revisiting though. His site too: http://worrydream.com/
ssebastianj · 2018-07-03
I'd also recommend "Magic Ink: Information Software And The Graphical Interface": http://worrydream.com/#!/MagicInk
jakelazaroff · 2018-04-15
So glad someone posted this. Basically everything Bret Victor does is gold. His website [1] has a bunch of great things he's written/done; two of my favorites are The Ladder of Abstraction [2] and Learnable Programming [3].
[1] http://worrydream.com/
[2] http://worrydream.com/#!2/LadderOfAbstraction
[3] http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming
Nzen · 2018-03-05
tl;dr a series of satirical photos of people holding a piece of glass milled in the shape of a conventional, contemporary cellphone. For a longer video equivalent, see motherboard's youtube video review of a display phone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CurrggRdaUY
In these situations, I'm reminded of Bret Victor's criticism of planar interaction http://worrydream.com/#!/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign . Unfortunately, until we are closer to programmable matter or an economic powerglove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAeViKt45eA I doubt we will escape the local maxima of variety we can offer via a touchscreen
patricklynch · 2017-12-16
My favorite resources are now all slightly dated; I haven't really kept up with the cutting edge as I've moved away from design and towards development.
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Web:
A List Apart, especially the articles section - https://alistapart.com/articles
CSS Zen Garden - http://www.csszengarden.com/
Magic Ink - Information Software and the Graphical Interface, by Bret Victor - http://worrydream.com/#!2/MagicInk
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Print:
Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS, by Zoe Mickley Gillenwater
The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web, by Dave Shea and Molly E. Holzschlag
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design, by Andy Clarke
guiambros · 2017-11-19
Nicky continues producing amazing work. It's like Bret Victor's[1] dreams come true. Check the non-linear demo [2].
[1] http://worrydream.com/
[2] http://ncase.me/joy-demo/nonlinear/?model=waves
hyperdunc · 2017-07-21
Not directly relevant to the article, but I love Bret's previous work in UX and data visualization[1].
[1] https://worrydream.com
jsingleton · 2016-10-27
+1 for worrydream.com. I don't mind the scrolling, once you're in a post it's fine. It's an experiment in UX after all.
This is the best one I've read: http://worrydream.com/#!/ClimateChange
The visualisations and interactions are really helpful in aiding understanding. It's nice to see people trying out new ways of presenting information.
sailfast · 2016-10-27
I've always liked Bret Victor's site, due in no small part to the amazing content: http://worrydream.com/
laxatives · 2016-10-27
Everyone is going nuts about the presentation/scrolling/UI of worrydream, but they are missing out on the goldmine of what he's actually been working on: http://worrydream.com/#!/Showreel2012
Its absolutely insane someone could be that productive in 2 years. A lot of the ideas in that showreel are incredible. Yeah many of them probably don't work, but I saw dozens of new interactions that don't exist anywhere else. Plus the demo is >4 years old. That's amazing.
His CV has the following quote: “One of the greatest user interface design minds in the world today.” — Alan Kay
People are obsessed with getting immediate gratification and have little to no attention span these days.
mynegation · 2016-01-06
There is a separate list of recommended books on his site:
http://worrydream.com/#!/Links
and corresponding HN discussion from a while ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7578795
nickbauman · 2015-10-19
Brings to mind Bret Victor's screed on the touch interface. Brilliant. Will be relevant for a long time to come, sadly. http://worrydream.com/#!/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign