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To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

Alan Kay

People are willing to pay you if you’re any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.
ALAN KAY

Anything Else Fabulous People Place Where Will
It’s easier to invent the future than to predict it.
ALAN KAY

Easier Future Invent Predict
If you’re not failing 90% of the time, then you’re probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
ALAN KAY

Challenge Fall Probably Problem Sufficient Time Work
The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick.
ALAN KAY

Destination Help Important Knowledge Perfume Pick Urge
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.
ALAN KAY

Idea Java Make New Old One Think
The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
ALAN KAY

Bean Blood Countries Manure Must Nature Research Time Tree
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.
ALAN KAY

Able Beyond Come Conclusion Destruction Document Negative Positive Prove Result
There’s a real sense in which MS and Apple never understood networking or operating systems (or what objects really are).
ALAN KAY

Apple Microsoft Network Object Operate System Real Sense Understood
Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose.
ALAN KAY

Always Basic Better Language Purpose Surface
The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn’t started yet.
ALAN KAY

Ahead Come Out Real Romance Yet
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.
ALAN KAY

Bare Degree Encourage First Freedom Investigation Metamedium Representation Tool
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.
ALAN KAY

Best Careful Coin Designer Even Extension Flip Good Heat Language Programme Side Tend Terrible
A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
ALAN KAY

Coffee Computer Convert Machine Scientist Urine
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.
ALAN KAY

All Art Material Must Romance Way Well
The soft nerds are the ones who get violently ill whenever anybody mentions an integral sign.
ALAN KAY

Anybody Integral Mention Nerd One Sign Soft Violent
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.
ALAN KAY

Certification Complain Heard Illustrious Java Program Science Undergraduate University

To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

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To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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