Alan Kay Quotes, Stanford University Quotes, Training Quotes

I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Stanford University Quotes , Training 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

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

6 years ago

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The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Firsts Quotes , Language Quotes

Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.

6 years ago

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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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Teacher Quotes , School Quotes

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Wise Quotes , Typical Quotes

The result is - document destruction - we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Able Quotes , Destruction Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Technology Quotes , Machines 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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Writing Quotes , Intelligent Quotes

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Funny Inspirational Quotes , Integrity Quotes

It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Inspirational Quotes

By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. 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, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Education Quotes , Teacher Quotes

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Nature Quotes , Flower Quotes

The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

6 years ago

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It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships.

6 years ago

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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

When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Iphone Quotes , Eight Quotes

Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose. That language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful. But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Merit Quotes

[Computing] is just a fabulous place for that, because it's a place where you don't have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It's a place where you can still be an artisan. People are willing to pay you if you're any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , People Quotes , Pay Quotes