Alan Kay Quotes

Quotes about:

• If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.

  Alan Kay

  Challenges, Problem, Failing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  57 Copy quote

• It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Easier

  17 Copy quote

• The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

  Alan Kay

  Firsts, Language, Programming

  56 Copy quote

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

  Alan Kay

  Simple, Simplicity, Should

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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.

  Alan Kay

  Nature, Flower, Should Have

  67 Copy quote

• I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

  Alan Kay

  Mind, Programming, Term

  "The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet". Alan Kay's keynote at OOPSLA conference, www.youtube.com. 1997.

  18 Copy quote

• Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

  Alan Kay

  Gold, Weight, Silver

  5 Copy quote

• Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Worry, Investing, Way

  26 Copy quote

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

  Alan Kay

  Research, Labs, Enough

  17 Copy quote

• People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, People, Serious

  Creative Think talk, www.folklore.org. July 20, 1982.

  84 Copy quote

• An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.

  Alan Kay

  Technology, Important, Firsts

  17 Copy quote

• Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising. There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the "Aha." Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in - the one that we think is reality.

  Alan Kay

  Art, Jobs, Laughter

  "Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk - and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

  20 Copy quote

• Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

  Alan Kay

  Wisdom, Perspective

  Creative Think talk, www.folklore.org. July 20, 1982.

  17 Copy quote

• In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

  Alan Kay

  Success, Tendencies

  10 Copy quote

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

  Alan Kay

  Technology, Born

  "An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay". techland.time.com. April 02, 2013.

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alan Kay

  Thinking, Ideas, Make You Think

  14 Copy quote

• 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.

  20 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alan Kay

  Law, Track, Want

  "The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence". Book edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast, 1984.

  21 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alan Kay

  Teacher, Lying, Book

  20 Copy quote

• Yazılım konusunda iddialı insanlar kendi donanımlarını yapmalılar.

  Alan Kay

  Design, Graphic Design, Graphic

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

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