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 KAYBad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can’t criticize anything.
More Alan Kay Quotes
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The idea that hardware on networks should just be caches for movable process descriptions and the processes themselves goes back quite a ways.
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Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
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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.
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Lisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material.
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A new friend is new wine, when it grows old, you will enjoy drinking it.
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Change is easy, except for the changed part.
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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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Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.
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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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There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the “Aha.”
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The greatest single programming language ever designed
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When I first prepared this particular talk…
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In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds.
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Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.
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Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in – the one that we think is reality.
ALAN KAY