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Alan Kay - Programming and Scaling

Colin McDonnell · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software architecture & designTech pioneers & interviewsProgramming language design

What it is

An Alan Kay talk on programming and scaling, covering theoretical limits of code size, engineering versus tinkering, and biological cells as inspiration for object-oriented design.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN fans call it one of Kay's best talks and recommend it for rethinking why programming paradigms have barely changed.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2016, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “Interesting talk on the theoretical limits of code size and engineering versus tinkering.”

    Talk on code size limits, engineering versus tinkering, and biological scaling.

    unimpressive, 2016-10 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

  2. “This is one of my favorite Alan Kay talks of all time”

    A favorite Alan Kay talk.

    espeed, 2018-10 · Strong recommendation · in “Soup – Alan Kay on Objects”

  3. “This talk is excellent and will cue you in on how to go about thinking about the fact”

    Frames how to think about unchanged programming paradigms over 65 years.

    neuralkoi, 2026-07 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Any New Computer Ideas?”

  4. “Cell biology was an inspiration for original OOP”

    Kay on cell biology as inspiration for original OOP.

    gambler, 2020-10 · Recommendation · in “Cells are fast and crowded places (2011)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: alan kay, oop, smalltalk, code size, systems thinking

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