Quote

A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.

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
Urine
Converting
Machine
Coffee
Scientist
Machines
Computer

More quotes by 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
Image
I think the trick with knowledge is to “acquire it, and forget all except the perfume” - because it is noisy and sometimes drowns out one's own “brain voices”. The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick.
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.
Alan Kay
Image
Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
Image
It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships.
Alan Kay
Image
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
Image
The greatest single programming language ever designed
Alan Kay
Image
As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.
Alan Kay
Image
The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.
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
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
Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
Alan Kay
Image
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.
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
To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
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
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.
Alan Kay
Image
Yazılım konusunda iddialı insanlar kendi donanımlarını yapmalılar.
Alan Kay
Image
We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
Alan Kay
Image
Change is easy, except for the changed part.
Alan Kay