Alan Kay Quotes

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

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

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

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. — Alan Kay

Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual - not how to use it but why, when and for what. — Alan Kay

Technology is anything invented after you were born. — Alan Kay

To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy. — Alan Kay

If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. — Alan Kay

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

The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas. — Alan Kay

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

In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing. — Alan Kay

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

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

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. — Alan Kay

I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. — Alan Kay

I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher. — Alan Kay

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

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

Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet — Alan Kay

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

Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet — Alan Kay

It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships, — Alan Kay

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

The only way you can predict the future is to build it. — Alan Kay

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. — Alan Kay

Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. — Alan Kay

Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. — Alan Kay

It's easier to invent the future than to predict it. — Alan Kay

An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it. — Alan Kay

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. — Alan Kay

A new friend is new wine, when it grows old, you will enjoy drinking it. — Alan Kay

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

Context is worth 80 IQ points. — Alan Kay

If you're utopian, you're never satisfied. — Alan Kay

Change is easy, except for the changed part. — Alan Kay

The greatest single programming language ever designed — Alan Kay

Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning. — Alan Kay

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. — Alan Kay

Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough. — Alan Kay

Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight. — Alan Kay

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

As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984. — Alan Kay

The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality. — Alan Kay

We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it. — Alan Kay