Alan Kay Quotes, People Quotes, Pay 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

The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Computer 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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Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

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I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Arrogance Quotes , Computer Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Secret Quotes , World 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

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

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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.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Nature Quotes , Flower 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

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Views Quotes , Perspective Quotes

Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet

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In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

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

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Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Believe Quotes , People 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

Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Journey Quotes , Civilization Quotes

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Technology Quotes , People Quotes

The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Technology Quotes