
Alan Kay on What was it like to be at Xerox PARC when Steve Jobs visited? - k4rtik
https://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-to-be-at-Xerox-PARC-when-Steve-Jobs-visited/answer/Alan-Kay-11?share=1
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jecel
Here is a recreation of the change that Dan Ingalls did to Smalltalk-78 to
address Steve Jobs' objection that scrolling wasn't smooth enough:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg)

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justin66
_I was present at the visit and demo, and it was the work of my group and
myself that Steve saw, yet the Quora question is the first time that anyone
has asked me what happened. (Worth pondering that interesting fact!)_

That really _is_ interesting. I am surprised Michael Hiltzik never asked about
it during the research for Dealers of Lightning. Given its length that book
probably tries to cover too much ground, but it's interesting that they never
had that conversation. (IIRC the author quotes Adele Goldberg in that chapter)

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marvel_boy
> This was his way of trying to be “top gun” when in a room where he wasn’t
> the smartest person.)

Why on the earth all the "business" people is so stupid ?

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steego
Yes. That's exactly how he came to that conclusion.

Alan Kay scanned the room, noted some of the the greatest minds and
contributors of early personal computers, took one look at Steve Jobs and
assessed he wasn't the smartest person in the room because he was a business
person.

It had nothing to do with his youth, lack of accomplishments, insight, ability
to articulate himself at that age, etc. etc. etc. It also had nothing to do
with the caliber of people they were hiring at Xerox, many who came from SRI
and who had helped realize Doug Engelbart's vision.

It all came down to business people vs. tech.

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notburnt
Also interesting is how Kay dismisses Job's objections as being motivated by
needing to put someone down.

I can as easily see them being constructive usability criticisms: details that
the engineers steeped in developing it missed, but concrete things that would
stop actual customer adoption.

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steego
> Also interesting is how Kay dismisses Job's objections as being motivated by
> needing to put someone down.

You realize that's a thing, right? People do that on both a conscious and
subconscious level. Some people actively play those manipulation games,
especially creative sales people. Some people merely benefit from that tactic
without fully appreciating that they're doing it.

I wasn't there, so I can't weigh in. It could be that Kay was projecting, and
it could be that Kay is a perceptive person and was merely recognizing a young
cocky kid using an old power tactic.

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notburnt
I realize that. Thanks for the condescension. But, you realize that people
aren't motivated by just one thing, right? Even if they are business people,
right?

Anyway, knowing what we know about Job's obsession with getting things right
(as he saw it), you do think that his sniping at specific look and feel issues
was _just_ to put the engineers down?

To me, it's a more cohesive picture if I interpret his actions as being
motivated by obsession to UX/asking more of engineers ( I know these guys
weren't working for him).

But, as you said, neither of us were there.

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alankay1
Hi -- making up coherent stories is not a good way to find out what is going
on. In this case, there is a lot of background information that could help to
create a more supported opinion. (Humans can't help having opinions but we
should put the unsupported ones in limbo at the very least.)

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pierre_d528
Misplaced but cannot comment under the original one.

You wrote: "I don't take notes. (It's worth pondering whether taking notes is
really an aid to internal remembering...)"

This is fascinating. Somehow, when what is out there is reflected "correctly"
in the mind, it stays there in a highly connected way.

Here is an other one that does not take notes and apparently understands
things.

"After high school, Scholze continued to pursue this interest in number theory
and geometry at the University of Bonn. In his mathematics classes there, he
never took notes, recalled Hellmann, who was his classmate. Scholze could
understand the course material in real time, Hellmann said. “Not just
understand, but really understand on some kind of deep level, so that he also
would not forget.”"

and:

"Yet even with the benefit of Scholze’s explanations, perfectoid spaces are
hard for other researchers to grasp, Hellmann said. “If you move a little bit
away from the path, or the way that he prescribes, then you’re in the middle
of the jungle and it’s actually very hard.” But Scholze himself, Hellmann
said, “would never lose himself in the jungle, because he’s never trying to
fight the jungle. He’s always looking for the overview, for some kind of clear
concept.”"

Source: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/peter-scholze-and-the-
future-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/peter-scholze-and-the-future-of-
arithmetic-geometry-20160628)

An other one who described something similar was Alexander Grothendiek in
"Récoltes et semailles": (apx traduced from French) "Understanding something
is like removing shards from one's eyes." He was known to be completely still
when trying to understand/solve something... yet it took him a lot of energy.
Understanding something is also understanding how it works, thus simulating it
in one's mind. In fact reflecting about something is probably identical to
simulating it in one's mind.

Can this be thought in a repeatable way? (or at all?)

Pascal has the perfect excuse for my misplaced and not short enough comment.

