Agreed. Having watched the video after reading the comments, I am actually rather disappointed at some of the negative things written here.
The interview contains a lot of other more inspiring stories than just his Harvard rejections.
For example, he talks about how he comes from a pretty bad elementary school, how he learned about the internet, how Alibaba got its name, how none of his capital came from the government, that Alibaba's workforce is actually ~47% women, how he rather would be respected than be rich, and his philosophy on businesses helping people.
Near the end, he says:
"I believe when you have 1 million dollars, that’s your money. When you have 20 million dollars, you start to have problems, worry about inflation, worry about which stock to buy, this and that -
When you have 1 billion dollars, that’s not your money. That’s the trust society gives you. They believe you can manage the money - use the money better than the government, than the others. So I think today, I have the resources to do more things. With the money we have, with the influence we have, we should spend more time on the young people."
Like several others have mentioned how the video contains so much more than then just headline, I get the sense that you did not watch the video before commenting.
His passing mention of Harvard could hardly imply he is "still obsessed" with Harvard.
I agree a common language is beneficial, but choosing English as the one is not without drawbacks.
As someone who speaks both English and a tad of Chinese, I am aware of instances where there are words in either language that can't be easily said in the other.
You'd think with a good enough command of English and logic you could necessarily translate any word of any other language in the universe.
However, I suspect it is not that simple. Some words invoke particular neuronal activity that encodes a particular thought which may be hard to replicate through the usage of a clumsy translation. Thus a difference in language may also be a reflection of a difference in culture and way of thinking.
Since people around the world care about different things, they will use different words more frequently, attach different connotations to them, and even invent new words whose usage you'd find to be isolated to particular geographical regions. So, the selection of a common language is almost like the selection of a particular way of thinking. The notion of cultural uniformity/superiority can rub people the wrong way.
So if there is to be a common language, it would be more considerate if it incorporated features from different languages, rather than be entirely from one language (English), and it should probably be engineered to be somewhat culturally agnostic.
As someone who is saddened to see the relatively low acceptance of Dart, I hope to more efforts like Strong mode take off.
More and more mission critical software is being written in javascript, affecting the livelihood of ordinary people. I think there is a significant audience that can benefit from a less dynamic, more static javascript.
The interview contains a lot of other more inspiring stories than just his Harvard rejections.
For example, he talks about how he comes from a pretty bad elementary school, how he learned about the internet, how Alibaba got its name, how none of his capital came from the government, that Alibaba's workforce is actually ~47% women, how he rather would be respected than be rich, and his philosophy on businesses helping people.
Near the end, he says: "I believe when you have 1 million dollars, that’s your money. When you have 20 million dollars, you start to have problems, worry about inflation, worry about which stock to buy, this and that - When you have 1 billion dollars, that’s not your money. That’s the trust society gives you. They believe you can manage the money - use the money better than the government, than the others. So I think today, I have the resources to do more things. With the money we have, with the influence we have, we should spend more time on the young people."