Quote

The greatest single programming language ever designed

Alan Kay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Kay
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: May 17
Computer Scientist
Jazz Guitarist
Jazz Musician
Programmer
University Teacher
Springfield
Massachusetts
Alan Curtis Kay
Alan C. Kay
Lisp
Programming
Designed
Single
Greatest
Language
Ever

More quotes by Alan Kay

Image
I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. 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
Image
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
Alan Kay
Image
In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.
Alan Kay
Image
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
Alan Kay
Image
Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.
Alan Kay
Image
A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
Alan Kay
Image
In computers, every 'new explosion' was set off by a software product that allowed users to program differently.
Alan Kay
Image
If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
Alan Kay
Image
Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual - not how to use it but why, when, and for what.
Alan Kay
Image
Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
Alan Kay
Image
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
Image
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
Image
School is basically about one point of view - the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view.
Alan Kay
Image
Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.
Alan Kay
Image
When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.
Alan Kay
Image
Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.
Alan Kay
Image
Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.
Alan Kay
Image
Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet
Alan Kay
Image
Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
Alan Kay
Image
Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.
Alan Kay