Quote

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

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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
Result
Products
Debilitating
Started
Curves
Learning
Consumer
Results
Worthless
Society
Tends
Desire
Consumers
Easy
Generally

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The greatest single programming language ever designed
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I made up the term object-oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
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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.
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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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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.
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The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
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The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
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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.
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I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me.
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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.
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The result is - document destruction - we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.
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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.
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Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual - not how to use it but why, when, and for what.
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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.
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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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Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.
Alan Kay
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Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
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I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher.
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
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