Alan Kay Quotes, Language Quotes, Building Quotes

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

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Language Quotes , Building 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.

5 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.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Merit Quotes

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

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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.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Hate Quotes , Law Quotes

In computers, every 'new explosion' was set off by a software product that allowed users to program differently.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Statistics Quotes , Computer Quotes

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

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The greatest single programming language ever designed

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The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Motivational Quotes

Sun Microsystems had the right people to make Java into a first-class language, and I believe it was the Sun marketing people who rushed the thing out before it should have gotten out.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Believe Quotes , Should Have Quotes

I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Lying Quotes

The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Freedom Quotes , Science Quotes

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

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

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The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Design Quotes , Coins 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

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

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Research Quotes , Labs Quotes

As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Years Quotes , Apples 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.

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Able Quotes , Destruction 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.

5 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Education Quotes , Teacher Quotes