Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
Interpretation
Lisp serves as a foundational tool for building software rather than just a conventional programming language.
Alan Kay's quote highlights the idea that Lisp, a programming language, is not merely a tool for coding, but rather a versatile framework that allows developers to construct complex systems. By likening it to building materials, Kay emphasizes its potential for creativity and innovation in software development, suggesting that programmers can use Lisp to create structures and solutions much like an architect uses bricks and mortar.
In practice
During a tech conference, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of using robust programming languages for development.
The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
The greatest single programming language ever designed
By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.
Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice.
What makes the IoT a disruptive technology in the way we organize economic life is that it helps humanity reintegrate itself into the complex choreography of the biosphere, and by doing so, dramatically increases productivity without compromising the ecological relationships that govern the planet.
It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.
The combination of human skills with technology will always be at the root of any solution to the future of making clothes.
You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we've come up with doing that is through companies.
I believe those that produce the least emissions in autos will also be those who have the greatest success worldwide.
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