Alan Kay Quotes About Computers

Quotes about: Computers

• I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

  Alan Kay

  Arrogance, Computer, Nano

  YouTube Channel "Jeff Gonis"/"Alan Kay at OOPSLA 1997 - The computer revolution hasnt happened yet", www.youtube.com. February 11, 2013.

• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

• 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.

  Alan Kay

  Funny Inspirational, Integrity, Technology

  "A Conversation with Alan Kay: Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk — and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman in ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

• The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, Machines, Language

• The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.

  Alan Kay

  Real, Romance, Revolution

  "Alan Kay, Computing Pioneer". moniker.net. September 03, 2013.

• I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

  Alan Kay

  Training, Degrees, Java

  ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

• In computers, every 'new explosion' was set off by a software product that allowed users to program differently.

  Alan Kay

  Statistics, Computer, Program

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

  Alan Kay

  Coffee, Machines, Computer

• The idea that hardware on networks should just be caches for movable process descriptions and the processes themselves goes back quite a ways. There's a real sense in which MS and Apple never understood networking or operating systems (or what objects really are), and when they decided to beef up their OSs, they went to (different) very old bad mainframe models of OS design to try to adapt to personal computers.

  Alan Kay

  Real, Ideas, Apples

• Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
  make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
  As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
  we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
  personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
  a part of our lives?

  Alan Kay

  Art, Reading, Writing

• 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

  Iphone, Eight, World

• 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

  Stanford University, Training, Java

  ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

• The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.

  Alan Kay

  Ideas, Computer, Instruments

  "Face to Face: Alan Kay Still Waiting for the Revolution". Interview with Lars Kongshem, www.scholastic.com. April/May 2003.

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