alt Hacker News> and so people need to stop repeating it
That would seem to be your sentiment, not his, based on the link you shared. Rather than being censorious he shared a nice story on the matter.
> and so people need to stop repeating it
That would seem to be your sentiment, not his, based on the link you shared. Rather than being censorious he shared a nice story on the matter.
No, it is not my sentiment nor am i being censorious.
It can be inferred from Kay's own words. He probably was just poking fun in a tongue-in-cheek manner often seen amongst larger-than-life figures.
John Backus called Edsger Dijkstra arrogant since the latter was highly critical of the former's research in functional programming (not the substance but the hyping). Kay was probably riffing off of that.
The problem is that a lot of noobs/kids/oldies-who-should-know-better often dismiss(!) Dijkstra's work because of this silly quote. Thus in this case, a "nice story" is actually an obstacle to people reading Dijkstra.