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.

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justin66 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Kay was probably riffing off of that.

You don't need to hypothesize about all this, to put things in their proper context you could listen to the speech where he famously said it.

https://youtu.be/aYT2se94eU0?t=324

	▲	rramadass 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, i knew of the video. That somewhat proves the point i make here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331352 People only focus on that phrase since it makes a nice "talking point" and ignore all the other interesting things from Kay's talk. For example; i never knew that most of Euler's proofs were wrong w.r.t. rigorous approach as defined today!

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messe 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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.

...is that not obvious from the original quote? Maybe it's a cultural difference (I'm from Ireland), but that's how I've always interpreted and it's never occurred to me that people took it seriously or as anything other than tongue in cheek.

	▲	rramadass 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The problem is with folks who don't know/have never read (seriously that is) Dijkstra. For example, every time somebody posts something about Dijkstra on HN/etc. somebody will trot out this silly quote and then others pile on (since it requires no effort) and derail any interesting conversation. It is human nature to have an opinion on everything and mediocrity often takes great pleasure in tearing down the greats (i mean the true ones) in order to soothe their own egos (since they know they don't measure up) i.e. "see? the great one is as flawed/mundane as us and i am showing him up". And Dijkstra was Dutch who are famously known to be blunt which is often perceived as arrogance by others :-)