Alan Kay Quotes, Language Quotes, Building Quotes

Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.

6 years ago

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I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Mind Quotes , Programming Quotes

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

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A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.

6 years ago

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Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Gold Quotes , Weight Quotes

School is basically about one point of view - the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Teacher Quotes , School Quotes

Bad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Media Quotes , Expression Quotes

There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Curves Quotes , Desire Quotes

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable. As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Art Quotes , Reading Quotes

Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)

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The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Technology Quotes , Machines Quotes

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Real Quotes , Example Quotes

When I first prepared this particular talk... I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that I do, that most people do, are because they hate something somebody else has done, or they hate that something hasn't been done. And I realized that informed criticism has completely been done in by the web. Because the web has produced so much uninformed criticism. It's kind of a Gresham's Law-bad money drives the good money out of circulation. Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can't criticize anything.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Hate Quotes , Law Quotes

The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Law Quotes , Track Quotes

Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary.

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The only way you can predict the future is to build it.

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If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This is not secret knowledge. It's just secret to this pop culture.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Secret Quotes , World Quotes

Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas Quotes

Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the "Aha." Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in - the one that we think is reality.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Art Quotes , Jobs Quotes

Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Communication Quotes , Television Quotes