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HP Fires Father of OOP
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 6:44 am
by patrikG
Slashdot wrote:"Hewlett-Packard has disbanded its Advanced Software Research team and sent its leader, reknowned programmer Alan Kay, packing. From today's Good Morning Silicon Valley: 'HP is bidding adieu to legendary Silicon Valley technologist Alan Kay. A founder of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, Kay -- who once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" -- was instrumental in the development of the windowing GUI and modern object-oriented programming. He envisioned a laptop computer long before the first ones rolled out and his Smalltalk programming language was a predecessor to Sun Microsystems' Java. Hard to believe HP's cutting him loose.' Maybe Apple will hire him."
Source:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article. ... 22/0018240
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:11 am
by shiznatix
uhhh why would you fire a guy like that? wouldnt people be begging for him to work for their company?
Re: HP Fires Father of OOP
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:44 am
by pickle
Slashdot wrote:"Maybe Apple will hire him."
That..... would.... be.....
AWESOME!!
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 9:49 am
by wwwapu
It's not about one man, but cutting heavily on research. I'm sure Mr Kay has no difficulties of finding a new and even better job.
We are one of only a handful of systems companies left on the planet that invests in significant R&D," he said. "My goal is for HP to be the R&D leader in the areas strategic to HP and our customers. I want them to think of HP as a company that's driving useful innovation and bringing it to market in the most efficient way possible to help them solve problems or improve their lives."
Possibly Alan Kays team did not "drive useful innovation" or "bring it to market in efficient way"

.Reserch is research and in my opinion there should allow "unuseful" research in order to innovate something unique.
Read Mark Hurd
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/featu ... B3&mtxl=L1
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:44 am
by Burrito
Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:46 am
by patrikG
Burrito wrote:wwwapu wrote:I'm sure Mr Kay has no difficulties of finding a new and even better job.
I vote we petition to hire him as devnet's OOP consultant.
I believe that position has been filled for quite a while by McG

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 10:49 am
by Burrito
can't hurt to double the forces, plus I'm sure mr Kay would like to broaden his knowledge and learn some new things and McG is just the man to teach him

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 3:33 pm
by d3ad1ysp0rk
Yea, with that extra $500,000 a year devnet gets in donations, right?

Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 7:13 pm
by patrikG
That's just the change. Jason is driving around these lorries filled with these huge cheques you see on pictures. So many zeros on there that they have to be oversized. What I am particularly proud of is that despite all the riches the mods and admins have amassed, we're still behaving as if all this hadn't happened. Amazing, come to think of it...

Posted: Sat Jul 23, 2005 2:01 am
by m3mn0n
Well he doesn't have to worry about getting EI cheques.
He'll be hired at another big tech company soon.