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The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

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
Disastrous
Programming
Learn
Language
Ever
Firsts
First
Thing

More quotes by Alan Kay

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The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
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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
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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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I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher.
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The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
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Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.
Alan Kay
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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.
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The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.
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Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
Alan Kay
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Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
Alan Kay
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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.
Alan Kay
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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.
Alan Kay
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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
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Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.
Alan Kay
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It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships.
Alan Kay
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
Alan Kay
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If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This is not secret knowledge. It's just secret to this pop culture.
Alan Kay
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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.
Alan Kay
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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.
Alan Kay
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People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Alan Kay