Alan Kay citations

Alan C. Kay, né le 17 mai 1940 à Springfield au Massachusetts, est un informaticien américain.

Après des études à l'université du Colorado à Boulder, il fait un Ph.D. d'informatique à l'université d'Utah de 1966 à 1969, avec David Evans et Ivan Sutherland. Très influencé par le langage Simula, il définit alors le langage orienté objet « Flex » et une machine d'exécution de Flex, avec l'objectif de permettre une programmation très conviviale. Flex peut être considéré comme un précurseur de Smalltalk.

Il rejoint les laboratoires PARC de Xerox en 1970, où il travaille sur le langage Smalltalk et sur la conceptualisation de l'ordinateur personnel moderne. Alan Kay est un des pères de la programmation orientée objet. Il est le concepteur du Dynabook, l'un des premiers prototypes d'ordinateur portable, et participe à l'élaboration des interfaces utilisateurs graphiques modernes, pour lesquels il introduit la métaphore du bureau.

Il rejoint au début des années 1980 la firme Atari où il occupe le poste de directeur scientifique. Après un séjour à Paris, au Centre mondial informatique et ressource humaine , il rejoint en 1984 la société Apple. Il travaille pour Hewlett Packard jusqu'en juillet 2005.

Il reçoit en 2003 le prix Turing de l'ACM pour ses travaux sur la programmation orientée objet, ainsi que le prix Kyoto. Wikipedia  

✵ 17. mai 1940
Alan Kay photo
Alan Kay: 25   citations 0   J'aime

Alan Kay: Citations en anglais

“Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05
Contexte: 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.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Alan Kay (1971) at a 1971 meeting of PARC http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/09/27/invent-the-future/
Similar remarks are attributed to Peter Drucker and Dandridge M. Cole.
Cf. Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (1963): "The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."
Nigel Calder reviewed Gabor's book and wrote, "we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it..."
1970s

“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.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05
Contexte: 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.

“The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Point of view is worth 80 IQ points
Talk at Creative Think seminar, 20 July 1982 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Creative_Think.txt
1980s

“I finally understood that the half page of code on the bottom of page 13 of the Lisp 1.5 manual was Lisp in itself. These were “Maxwell’s Equations of Software!””

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=273&page=4
2000s

“… greatest single programming language ever designed. (About the Lisp programming language.)”

2003. Daddy, Are We There Yet? A Discussion with Alan Kay http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/04/03/alan_kay.html
2000s

“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.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“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.”

The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet — 1997 OOPSLA Keynote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
1990s

“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.”

1984 in Alan Kay's paper Inventing the Future which appears in The AI Business: The Commercial Uses of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Patrick Henry Winston and Karen Prendergast. As quoted by Eugene Wallingford in a post entiteled ALAN KAY'S TALKS AT OOPSLA http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2004-11.html#e2004-11-06T21_03_42.htm on November 06, 2004 9:03 PM at the website of the Computer Science section of the University of Northern Iowa.
1980s

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

The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet — 1997 OOPSLA Keynote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
Alternative: I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
Attributed to Alan Kay in: Peter Seibel (2005) Practical Common Lisp. p.189
1990s

“Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)”

2010 for Computerworld Australia http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/352182/z_programming_languages_smalltalk-80/
2010s

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

talk at Creative Think seminar, 20 July 1982 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Creative_Think.txt
1980s

“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.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This is not secret knowledge. It’s just secret to this pop culture.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“I hired finishers because I’m a good starter and a poor finisher.”

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

“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.
ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523
2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

Auteurs similaires

Richard Bach photo
Richard Bach 8
écrivain américain
Kurt Vonnegut photo
Kurt Vonnegut 29
écrivain américain
Jack London photo
Jack London 12
écrivain américain
John Steinbeck photo
John Steinbeck 18
écrivain américain
Maya Angelou photo
Maya Angelou 4
poétesse, actrice et militante américaine
Richard Feynman photo
Richard Feynman 5
physicien américain
Jack Kerouac photo
Jack Kerouac 11
écrivain et poète américain
Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury 20
écrivain américain
Francis Scott Fitzgerald photo
Francis Scott Fitzgerald 18
écrivain américain
George Carlin photo
George Carlin 35
humoriste américain