“Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."”

§5
Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

Word Play (1974)

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

&quot;Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?&quot; http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=1283933&amp;type=pdf, 1977 Turing Award Lecture, Communications of the ACM 21 (8), (August 1978): p. 614

Source: Math for the Layman (1999), Ch. 10, §D

Biographical memoir: "John von Neumann (1903 - 1957)" in Year book of the American Philosophical Society (1958); later in Symmetries and Reflections : Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner (1967), p. 261
Context: A deep sense of humor and an unusual ability for telling stories and jokes endeared Johnny even to casual acquaintances. He could be blunt when necessary, but was never pompous. A mind of von Neumann's inexorable logic had to understand and accept much that most of us do not want to accept and do not even wish to understand. This fact colored many of von Neumann's moral judgments. "It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature." Only scientific intellectual dishonesty and misappropriation of scientific results could rouse his indignation and ire — but these did — and did almost equally whether he himself, or someone else, was wronged.

The Emperor's Old Clothes

Epigrams on Programming, 1982

Interview with Ed Hirsch (1986), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series (Penguin, 1988)