Lambda the Ultimate

Programming and Scaling, a one-hour lecture by Alan Kay at his finest (and that's saying something!)

Some of my favorite quotes:

• "The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality."
• "We could imagine taking the internet as a model for doing software modules. Why don't people do it?" (~00:17)
• "One of the mistakes that we made years ago is that we made objects too small." (~00:26)
• "Knowledge in many cases trumps IQ. [Henry] Ford was powerful because Isaac Newton changed the way we think." (~00:28)
• "Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight." (~00:30)
• "Whatever we [in computing] do is more like what the Egyptians did. Building pyramids, piling things on top of each other."
• "The ability to make science and engineering harmonize with each other - there's no greater music." (~00:47)

And there are some other nice ideas in there: "Model-T-Shirt Programming" - software the definition of which fits on a T-shirt. And imagining source code sizes in terms of books: 20,000 LOC = a 400-page book. A million LOC = a stack of books one meter high. (Windows Vista: a 140m stack of books.)

Note: this a Flash video, other formats are available.