“There are some concepts that are like the constellations: you can use them to understand and navigate the world, solve problems, invent new stuff– ideas like geometric progression, proportion and scale,change over time,etc. All have heuristic power, and many go beyond this to provide real methods for stronger thinking. Some can be learned via “guided insight” and some require real practice.

http://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas.html

“Engineers should read a book about how the Empire State building was done. Including the demolition of the building on the site before, the Empire State building was built in 11 months by 3000 people. We don’t know how to do this in computing. Whatever we think engineering is, it can’t mean the modern use of the term. I don’t know of a single computing system that is attached to you that if it fails it will almost certainly kill you. That’s what happens with jet engines. That’s engineering”

http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_is_com.shtml

“UCLA has one computer science department, but 25 full departments of biology (not counting medical school stuff). Why? Biologists are smarter then we are. When things are bogging down, the best thing to do is to go create a new department. To do creative work in computing, you must get past what you think is normal. Write down the 20 things you think are true of computing and try to demolish them.”

The future five years out is easy to predict because all of the forces acting on computer science are trying to keep it the same as it is now. Likely, the future will be more of what we have now. “

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented