Lisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material.
ALAN KAYPossibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
More Alan Kay Quotes
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When I first prepared this particular talk…
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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.
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When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free?
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Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc.
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The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
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The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.
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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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It’s all about long-term, sustaining relationships.
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The hard nerds are the ones who used to have the slide rules at their belt; now they have calculators.
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Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.
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That language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful.
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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.
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The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
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Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories.
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This is not secret knowledge. It’s just secret to this pop culture.
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Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.
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Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
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Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can’t criticize anything.
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Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose.
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Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general’s warning.
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A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
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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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But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.
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If you’re not failing 90% of the time, then you’re probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
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They don’t like the idea of having different points of view.
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The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.
ALAN KAY