

The Most Important Idea in Computer Science from Alan Kay - smanek
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060224.html

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andreyf
Alan Kay has got to be one of the smartest people alive. I wish he wrote more.
My favorites are his answer to the question "What do you believe is true, even
though you cannot prove it?":

<http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_8.html#kay>

and his essay "Predicting the Future":

<http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm>

His other work is quite impressive, also, but these two are by far my
favorites.

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gruseom
One idea that Kay has championed is what he called somewhere "recursive
design", in which you begin with a kernel that is both simple and universal
and then build the rest of a complex system in terms of that. The relation to
Lisp is obvious, and Lisp and Smalltalk environments are probably the best
examples of systems designed this way. I'm curious what other examples people
here might cite.

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markbao
First .coop site I've come across.

