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by fidotron3 hours ago |
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upvoteby srean3 hours ago|
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That's a famous quote and age might have mellowed him. But he was not like that at all in person with his students. He did insist that one be precise with ones words.

The origin of the quote may have more to do with cultural differences between the Dutch and Americans.

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upvoteby blast2 hours ago|
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That's a great point which never occurred to me about Dijkstra, even though I knew where he came from. My father in law used to like this joke: "He was Dutch and behaved as such."
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upvoteby rramadass3 hours ago|
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Alan Kay himself said this quote is taken out-of-context and so people need to stop repeating it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11799963
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upvoteby justin662 hours ago|
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> and so people need to stop repeating it

That would seem to be your sentiment, not his, based on the link you shared. Rather than being censorious he shared a nice story on the matter.

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upvoteby rramadass46 minutes ago|
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No, it is not my sentiment nor am i being censorious.

It can be inferred from Kay's own words. He probably was just poking fun in a tongue-in-cheek manner often seen amongst larger-than-life figures.

John Backus called Edsger Dijkstra arrogant since the latter was highly critical of the former's research in functional programming (not the substance but the hyping). Kay was probably riffing off of that.

The problem is that a lot of noobs/kids/oldies-who-should-know-better often dismiss(!) Dijkstra's work because of this silly quote. Thus in this case, a "nice story" is actually an obstacle to people reading Dijkstra.

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upvoteby masfuerte1 hours ago|
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Weirdly, that ten-year-old Alan Kay comment is shown as "1 day ago" by HN.
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upvoteby dang54 minutes ago|
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Not sure what happened there but it was probably a fat-fingered thing from me merging today's threads. Fixed now. Thanks for the heads-up!
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