Alan Kay Quotes, Curves Quotes, Desire Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Curves Quotes , Desire Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Voice Quotes

Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Wise Quotes , Typical Quotes

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Simple Quotes , Simplicity Quotes

The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Computer Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Ideas Quotes

[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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , People Quotes , Pay Quotes

Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Technology Quotes

It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Long Quotes , Term Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Iphone Quotes , Eight Quotes

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Research Quotes , Labs Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Funny Inspirational Quotes , Integrity Quotes

Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , People Quotes , Trying Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Ocean Quotes , Technology Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Believe Quotes , Should Have Quotes

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

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Coffee Quotes , Machines Quotes

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Real Quotes , Example Quotes

Basic would never have surfaced because there was always a language better than Basic for that purpose. That language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful. But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Merit Quotes

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.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Believe Quotes , People Quotes

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

6 years ago

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Tags : Alan Kay Quotes , Wisdom Quotes