Why “Kay” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
If I'm interpreting you correctly, you're saying that my original disagreement was mostly with my misunderstanding of what you meant, and the only thing we actually disagree on…
by kragen · Sep 29, 2026
I don't remember any CP/M system with the BIOS part in ROM (and BDOS loaded from disk). It would be possible, of course, but every subsequent version of CP/M for that…
by rbanffy · Sep 28, 2026
I think the main objective of both the Lilith workstation and the Oberon language were to be practical tools for the kind of graphical user interfaces Kay proposed in his disser…
by kragen · Sep 28, 2026
> I think that my claim that Mesa's GUI was inspired by Smalltalk That was not my topic. I was (obviously) talking about the influence of Smalltalk to Oberon, and only that. And…
by Rochus · Sep 28, 2026
You could be right that Wirth didn't know Kay well enough to recognize him. I thought of PARC in that period as being relatively small, and Kay was fairly prominent within it, s…
by kragen · Sep 28, 2026
Kay probably explained how we were the BIOS then, flipping switches and loading programs by hand. Different era!
by Mugshelf · Sep 28, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "kay" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "kay" over time.
The name Kay is both a surname and a given name. In English-speaking countries, it is usually a feminine name, often a short form of Katherine or one of its variants; but it is also used as a first name in its own right, and also as a masculine name. Read more on Wikipedia