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I made up the term object-oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

Alan Kay

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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
Tell
Made
Mind
Oriented
Programming
Object
Objects
Term

More quotes by Alan Kay

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Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.
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The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
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I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
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I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher.
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A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
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There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating.
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It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.
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Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.
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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.
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Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary.
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In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds. The hard nerds are the ones who used to have the slide rules at their belt now they have calculators. The soft nerds are the ones who get violently ill whenever anybody mentions an integral sign.
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Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
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In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.
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Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
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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. 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.
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[Computing] is just a fabulous place for that, because it's a place where you don't have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It's a place where you can still be an artisan. People are willing to pay you if you're any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.
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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
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The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.
Alan Kay
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
Alan Kay
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Change is easy, except for the changed part.
Alan Kay