Alan Kay
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Alan Kay | |
---|---|
Thesis | FLEX: A Flexible Extendable Language (1968) |
Doctoral advisors | David C. Evans Robert S. Barton |
Notable students | David Canfield Smith |
Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940)[1] is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox PARC he led the design and development of the first modern windowed computer desktop interface. There he also led the development of the influential object-oriented programming language Smalltalk, both personally designing most of the early versions of the language and coining the term "object-oriented." He has been elected a Fellow of the
Kay is also a former professional jazz guitarist, composer, and theatrical designer. He also is an amateur classical pipe organist.
Early life and work
In an interview on education in America with the Davis Group Ltd., Kay said:
I had the misfortune or the fortune to learn how to read fluently starting about the age of three, so I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit first grade, and I already knew the teachers were lying to me.[4]
Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Kay's family relocated several times due to his father's career in physiology before ultimately settling in the New York metropolitan area.
He attended Brooklyn Technical High School. Having accumulated enough credits to graduate, he then attended Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia, where he majored in biology and minored in mathematics.
Kay then taught guitar in
After his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder and earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in mathematics and molecular biology in 1966.
In the autumn of 1966, he began graduate school at the
In 1968, he met
In 1969, Kay became a visiting researcher at the
Along with some colleagues at PARC, Kay is one of the fathers of the idea of object-oriented programming (OOP), which he named.[8] Some original object-oriented concepts, including the use of the words 'object' and 'class', had been developed for Simula 67 at the Norwegian Computing Center. Kay said:
I'm sorry that I long ago coined the term "objects" for this topic because it gets many people to focus on the lesser idea. The big idea is "messaging".[9]
While at PARC, Kay conceived the
Subsequent work
From 1981 to 1984, Kay was Chief Scientist at
In 2001, Kay founded Viewpoints Research Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to children, learning, and advanced software development. For their first ten years, Kay and his Viewpoints group were based at Applied Minds in Glendale, California, where he and Ferren worked on various projects. Kay served as president of the Institute until its closure in 2018.
In 2002 Kay joined HP Labs as a senior fellow,[13] departing when HP disbanded the Advanced Software Research Team on July 20, 2005.[14] He has been an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, a visiting professor at Kyoto University, and an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kay served on the advisory board of TTI/Vanguard.
Squeak, Etoys, and Croquet
In December 1995, while still at Apple, Kay collaborated with many others to start the
Tweak
In 2001, it became clear that the Etoy architecture in Squeak had reached its limits in what the Morphic interface infrastructure could do.
The Children's Machine
In November 2005, at the
Reinventing programming
Kay has lectured extensively on the idea that the computer revolution is very new, and all of the good ideas have not been universally implemented. His lectures at the OOPSLA 1997 conference, and his ACM Turing Award talk, "The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet", were informed by his experiences with Sketchpad, Simula, Smalltalk, and the bloated code of commercial software.
On August 31, 2006, Kay's proposal to the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) was granted, funding Viewpoints Research Institute for several years. The proposal title was "STEPS Toward the Reinvention of Programming: A compact and Practical Model of Personal Computing as a Self-exploratorium".[17] STEPS is a recursive acronym that stands for "STEPS Toward Expressive Programming Systems". A sense of what Kay is trying to do comes from this quote, from the abstract of a seminar at Intel Research Labs, Berkeley: "The conglomeration of commercial and most open source software consumes in the neighborhood of several hundreds of millions of lines of code these days. We wonder: how small could be an understandable practical 'Model T' design that covers this functionality? 1M lines of code? 200K LOC? 100K LOC? 20K LOC?"[18]
Awards and honors
Kay has received many awards and honors, including:
- UdK 01-Award in Berlin, Germany for pioneering the GUI;[19] J-D Warnier Prix D'Informatique; NEC C&C Prize (2001)
- Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado (2002)
- ACM Turing Award "For pioneering many of the ideas at the root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, leading the team that developed Smalltalk, and for fundamental contributions to personal computing"[1] (2003)
- (2004)
- UPE Abacus Award, for individuals who have provided extensive support and leadership for student-related activities in the computing and information disciplines (2012)
- Honorary doctorates:
- – Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm[21](2002)
- – Georgia Institute of Technology[22](2005)
- – Columbia College Chicago awarded Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa[23] (2005)
- – Laurea Honoris Causa in Informatica, Università di Pisa, Italy (2007)
- – University of Waterloo[24] (2008)
- – Kyoto University (2009)
- – Universidad de Murcia[25](2010)
- – University of Edinburgh[26] (2017)
- Honorary Professor, Berlin University of the Arts
- Elected fellow of:
- – American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- – National Academy of Engineering for inventing the concept of portable personal computing. (1997)
- – Royal Society of Arts
- – Computer History Museum "for his fundamental contributions to personal computing and human-computer interface development."[27] (1999)
- – Association for Computing Machinery "For fundamental contributions to personal computing and object-oriented programming."[28] (2008)
- – Hasso Plattner Institute[29][30] (2011)
His other honors include the J-D Warnier Prix d'Informatique, the ACM Systems Software Award, the NEC Computers & Communication Foundation Prize, the Funai Foundation Prize, the Lewis Branscomb Technology Award, and the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education.
See also
References
- ^ a b "ACM Turing Award". 2003. published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012
- ^ Kay, Alan (1997). The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet (Speech).
- ^ "Alan Kay | Biography, Inventions, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
- ^ "Interview with Alan Kay on education". The Generational Divide. The Davis Group. Retrieved March 5, 2011.
- ^ Kay, Alan (1968). "FLEX: A Flexible Extendable Language" (PDF). University of Utah. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 8, 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-470-11881-8. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
- ^ Barnes, S. B. "Alan Kay: Transforming the Computer Into a Communication Medium" (PDF). Engineering & Technology History Wiki. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 1, 2016.
- ^ Ram, Stefan L. (July 23, 2003). "Dr. Alan Kay on the Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" (document)". Stefan L. Ram, Berlin, Germany. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
- ^ "AlanKayOnMessaging".
- ISBN 978-0-201-89502-5.
- ^ History, One Laptop Per Child, archived from the original on July 6, 2020, retrieved July 18, 2020
- ^ "Alan Kay". I Programmer. November 13, 2009.
- ^ Fordahl, Matthew (November 26, 2002). "Computer Pioneer Has Joined HP Labs". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 18, 2022.
- ^ Paczkowski, John (July 21, 2005). "HP converting storied garage into recycling center". Good Morning Silicon Valley. Media News Group. Archived from the original on June 26, 2007.
- Raab, Andreas (July 6, 2001). "Events, Scripts & Multiple Processes". Archived from the originalon October 2, 2011. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
- ^ "Tweak: Whitepapers". Archived from the original on October 2, 2011.
- Raab, Andreas. "Steps Toward The Reinvention of Programming – A Compact And Practical Model of Personal Computing As A Self-Exploratorium" (PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on May 8, 2013. Retrieved March 23, 2013. Proposal to NSF – Granted on August 31, 2006
- ^ Kay, Alan (November 27, 2006). "How Simply and Understandably Could The "Personal Computing Experience" Be Programmed?". Archived from the original on June 25, 2007.
- ^ "UdK 01-Award". Archived from the original on May 28, 2005.
- ^ "2004 Recipients of the Charles Stark Draper Prize". National Academy of Engineering. National Academy of Sciences.
- KTH. Archived from the originalon January 9, 2009. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
- ^ "Tech forms dual-degree program with Chinese university" (PDF). The Whistle. Georgia Institute of Technology. December 19, 2005. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 1, 2016.
- ^ "Columbia College Chicago Announces 2005 Commencement Ceremonies". Columbia College Chicago. May 10, 2005. Archived from the original on March 20, 2012.
- ^ "UW's convocation graduates 4,378 students, awards 10 honorary degrees". University of Waterloo. June 10, 2008. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
- ^ "Alan Curtis Kay: Doctor Honoris Causa". Facultad de Informática, Universidad de Murcia. 2010.
- ^ "Alan Kay receives an honorary degree from the School of Informatics". School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. 2017.
- ^ "Alan Kay: 1999 Fellow Awards Recipient". Computer History Museum. Archived from the original on October 3, 2012.
- ^ "ACM Fellows". Association for Computing Machinery. 2008.
- ^ "Alan Kay as HPI fellow appreciated" (in German). July 21, 2011. Archived from the original on July 24, 2011.
- ^ Kay, Alan (July 21, 2011). "Programming and Scaling". Germany, Potsdam, Hasso-Plattner Institute: HPI Potsdam.
External links
- Viewpoints Research Institute
- Alan Kay at TED
- "There is no information content in Alan Kay" 2012
- Programming a problem-oriented language, an unpublished book, by Charles H. Moore, June 1970