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

Alan Kay

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.
ALAN KAY

Being Belief Bigots Confide Human Problem Reality
I hired finishers because I’m a good starter and a poor finisher.
ALAN KAY

Finisher Good Hire Poor Starter
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
ALAN KAY

Disastrous Ever First Language Learn Most Program Thing
If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place.
ALAN KAY

Chance Fix Java More Much Place Pleasant Pros Sun World
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.
ALAN KAY

Brick Brute Country Force Million Most Much Pyramid Slave Software Thousand Today Very
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
ALAN KAY

Eighty Perspective Point Worth
Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can’t criticize anything.
ALAN KAY

Anything Bad Criticism Good Out
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.
ALAN KAY

Around Basic Decide Done Franchise Happen Spread Timeshare
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
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.
ALAN KAY

Approach Done Hate Most People Realize Someone Something Usually
I fear – as far as I can tell – that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.
ALAN KAY

Basically Far Jar Java Program Tell Undergraduate Vocational
If you’re utopian, you’re never satisfied.
ALAN KAY

Country never Utopian
A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
ALAN KAY

Coffee Computer Convert Machine Scientist Urine
We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
ALAN KAY

Future Invent IT Predict
And when they decided to beef up their OSs, they went to (different) very old bad mainframe models of OS design to try to adapt to personal computers.
ALAN KAY

Adapt Bad Beef Computer Different Mainframe Model Model Decide Old Personal Try Went
Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world.
ALAN KAY

Enough Extend Man Medium Powerful Reach Topple World

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

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

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