Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
Interpretation
This quote compares modern software development to the construction of an Egyptian pyramid, highlighting issues of complexity and lack of foundational planning.
Alan Kay's quote uses the metaphor of an Egyptian pyramid to convey a criticism of contemporary software development practices. He suggests that much of today's software is built without proper structural integrity or thoughtful design, relying instead on a massive accumulation of code akin to the bricks of a pyramid that were laid with brute force. This implies that the effectiveness and longevity of such software is questionable, as it may not stand the test of time without a solid foundation.
In practice
Discussing software architecture at a tech conference.
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.
As we put autonomous cars on the road, connect Alexas to our lights and our thermostats, put ill-protected Internet-connected video cameras on our houses, and conduct our financial lives over our cell phones, our vulnerabilities expand exponentially.
Every day we are paying more for energy than we should due to poor insulation, inefficient lights, appliances, and heating and cooling equipment - money we could save by investing in energy efficiency.
Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.
I wanted to create a toolkit which I would have wanted as an entrepreneur to use these principles of psychology in product design. Some startups totally forget the trigger. In some, the action is too complicated. Others don't have a variable reward, which maintains mystery.
The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do.
Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
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