Transcript of Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at Founders Forum Smart Nation Singapore...
Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening and welcome to Singapore! At a time where grey clouds are hovering over the world economy, we are lucky. Firstly, there were no grey clouds in the sky this evening. Secondly, the tech industry is one of the bright spots in the world. There is a sense of adventure,…
Hasnain says:
A speech from a leader who gets tech.
"I take a personal interest in this. 40 years ago, after doing a math degree, I went on to study computer science, on my father’s advice. He said there is a future in that, and he was right. So for the Smart Nation Programme Office, I have put Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in charge, reporting to me. Vivian is both a hacker and a dabbler – He used to be an eye surgeon but since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps. His day job is to be the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and so when he builds apps, he uses the real time APIs generated by the Ministry. That’s called user-testing. I used to enjoy this; it is a long time since I’ve done anything. The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date. My children are in IT, two of them – both graduated from MIT. One of them browsed a book and said, “Here, read this”. It said “Haskell – learn you a Haskell for great good”, and one day that will be my retirement reading. "
Posted on 2015-04-22T16:45:57+0000