Quote

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

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
Ones
Since
Ideas
Thing
Make
Think
Java
Thinking
Distressing
Like
Computing

More quotes by Alan Kay

Image
An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.
Alan Kay
Image
[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
Image
To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
Alan Kay
Image
We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
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
Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
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
A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
Alan Kay
Image
I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher.
Alan Kay
Image
The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
Alan Kay
Image
Yazılım konusunda iddialı insanlar kendi donanımlarını yapmalılar.
Alan Kay
Image
It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.
Alan Kay
Image
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.
Alan Kay
Image
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.
Alan Kay
Image
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 Kay
Image
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
Image
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
Image
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
Image
Change is easy, except for the changed part.
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