Appreciating Alan Kay

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-Alan Kay

Alan Kay is an inventor. Object oriented programming. The modern GUI interface. Tablet computing. Smalltalk.

He’s a visionary. He’s pretty much the definition of a visionary. He’s visionaried for Apple and HP and Disney. He has the childlike innocence of the greatest visionaries. And of course he’s a genius.

Everybody should know about Alan Kay.

Here he is talking about Object Oriented Programming.

Here’s an article on Kay’s influential Dynabook concept.

And here’s a history of Smalltalk.

Read all of these. Right away.

One comment

  1. Mike Morton

    I saw Kay speak circa 1986. An audience member asked how Kay could stand the fact that his ideas took 10 to 20 years to get into use. Kay smiled and said something like “The secret to satisfaction in this business is living a long time.”