“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.”

Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)

Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.

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.

This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating.

There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.

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

There’s a real sense in which MS and Apple never understood networking or operating systems (or what objects really are).

The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

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

It’s easier to invent the future than to predict it.

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

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

There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the “Aha.”

We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

Change is easy, except for the changed part.