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
Machine
Coffee
Scientist
Machines
Computer
Urine
Converting

More quotes by 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
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
Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet
Alan Kay
Image
The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.
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
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
Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.
Alan Kay
Image
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
Alan Kay
Image
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
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. 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.
Alan Kay
Image
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
Image
Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.
Alan Kay
Image
The only way you can predict the future is to build it.
Alan Kay
Image
Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
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
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.
Alan Kay
Image
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points
Alan Kay
Image
It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships.
Alan Kay
Image
Sun Microsystems had the right people to make Java into a first-class language, and I believe it was the Sun marketing people who rushed the thing out before it should have gotten out.
Alan Kay