I'm not sure I can impartially answer this question, as I'm a great admirer of Alan Kay, and of his concept of OO, but I'll try. First thing first is that he's

I'm not sure I can impartially answer this question, as I'm a great admirer of Alan Kay, and of his concept of OO, but I'll try. First thing first is that he's a pretty great talker. That ensures anyone will even take the time to listen to what he has to say. But unlike some other great talkers/writers in our field with slavish devotion, Alan Kay was part of pioneering cutting edge research into personal computing. To me he's a breath of fresh air. He's not trying to sell hocus pocus methodologies at software conferences, he's taking a holistic, big picture view of computing and offers some crazy ideas - not all of which I agree with, but most of which have some merit. His view that computing is an immature field and we don't yet know what we are doing really resonates with me. People too often try and treat it like it's something mature like the electrical engineering or mathematics that underpins it, but it's totally not. We're still in the stage where we are constantly forgetting our history because we're stuck in fashion cycles (ie, people calling Swift innovative because it takes ideas from 1970s programming languages). And he rightly shines a light on that and says hey, we can and should aim to do better. For that I applaud him. He can be a bit esoteric and out there and what he says is often not directly applicable to everyday programmers. I totally agree. But from thousand foot view strategic perspective he's well worth listening to.