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

Alan Kay

Categorized in : Challenges Problem Failing

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first p... by Alan Kay

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

programming language firsts

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

investing worry way

The greatest single programming language ever designed by Alan Kay

The greatest single programming language ever designed

programming-languages programming language

An important technology first creates a problem and then solves i... by Alan Kay

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

technology important firsts

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.

teacher book lying

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.

track law want

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.

nature flower should-have

School is basically about one point of view - the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view.

views teacher school

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

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

born technology

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.

laughter jobs art

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.

nano computer arrogance

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.

eight iphone world

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.

make-you-think ideas thinking

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.

technology ocean men

People who are really serious about software should make their ow... by Alan Kay

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

technology serious people

I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did no... by Alan Kay

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

programming term mind

Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material. by Alan Kay

Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.

programming building language

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

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

easier inspirational

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to l... by Alan Kay

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

labs research enough

The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revol... by Alan Kay

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

romance revolution real