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I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. -- Ralph W. Emerson
He hadn't a single redeeming vice. --Oscar Wilde
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme -- Mark Twain
What's this in my mouth? Oh no, it's words! And they're not mine!
-- Bill Atkins on comp.lang.lisp
A democrat is one who can't even take his own side in an
argument
What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
Ans: Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam.
-- The Al Franken Show
A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by
being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
I hear and forget. I see and I remember. I do and I
understand.
-- Chinese Proverb
As the sun eclipses the stars by its brilliance, so the man of
knowledge will eclipse the fame of others in assemblies of the people
if he proposes algebraic problems, and still more if he solves them.
-- Brahmagupta (Indian Mathematician, 598 AD - 670 AD)
(Quoted in F Cajori, A History of Mathematics)
The problem with "What You See Is What You Get" is that what you see is
all you've got.
-- Brian Kernighan
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time
and chance happeneth to them all.
-- Ecclesiastes
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand
to have the old man around. But when I got to 21, I was astonished at
how much the old man had learned in 7 years.
-- Mark Twain
The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity
-- C.A.R. Hoare
As far as laws refer to reality they are not certain and as far as they
are certain they do not refer to reality.
-- A. Einstein.
Either you believe in the law of excluded middle or you don't.
Elegance [in programming] is not optional. -- Richard A. O'Keefe
Big shots are little shots who keep shooting.
Genius is only the power of making continuous effort.
Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent
perspiration. -- Thomas A. Edison
Every science begins with the observation of striking events like
thunderstorms or fevers, and soon establishes rough connections between
them and other events, such as hot weather or infection. The next stage
is a stage of exact observation and measurement, and it is often very
difficult to know what we should measure in order to best explain the
events we are investigating. In the case of both thunder- storms and
fevers the clue came from measuring the lengths of mercury columns in
glass tubes, but what prophet could have predicted this? Then comes a
stage of innumerable graphs and tables of figures, the dispair of
students, the laughing-stock of the man in the street. And out of this
intellectual mess there sudden crystallizes a new and easily grasped
idea, the idea of a cyclone or an electron, a bacillus or an antitoxin,
and everybody wonders why it had not been thought of before.
-- The Future of Biology
J.B.S. Haldane
The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency for the
discipline to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land of abstract theory
and technical manipulation.
-Tom Naylor
A genuine first-hand religious experience ... is bound to be a
heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely
madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any
others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still
prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself
an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of
inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand
exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.
-- The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
For a successful technology, reality must take prededence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
-- Report on the Challenger Disaster.
Richard P. Feynman,
This leads to the paradox that the more original a discovery the more
obvious it seems afterwords. The creative act is not an act of creation
in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of
nothing; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes
already existing facts, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts,
the more striking the new whole.
-- Koestler
Excellent work is the product of EXCESSIVE revision.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a
drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short,
or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but
that ever word tell.
-- The Elements of Style
W. Strunk and E.B. White
If you can see the bandwagon, it is already too late.
--Warren Buffet
Engineer is a man who can do for a dime what any fool can do for a
dollar.
--Anonymous
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-- Einstein
I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the
one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of
discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict
between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit
the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naivete, unburdened by
conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset.
-- Harish Chandra (Mathematician)
Quoted in R Langlands, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal
Society 31 (1985) 197 - 225.
If we knew the future, it will be here now.
-- Frank Harary
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
-- Statement found on most financial literature
If you want to get something done, find a busy man.
Confidence is not about being always right, but always knowing what to
do when things go wrong.
Responsibility is measured not by who gets credit if things go right,
but by who gets blamed if things go wrong.
The three most important things in programming: notation, notation,
notation.
(with apologies to all real estate agents)
Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake -- Napoleon
Bonaparte
"Computer programmers tend, by and large, to be quirky and highly
individualistic. Trying to organize or manage such awkward characters
is normally as thankless as herding cats."
-John Naughton, "A Brief History of the Future"
"Teach Yourself Algorithms in 21 days".
Chapter 1 - Time Dilation
- braid_ged
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
(Seen in joelonsoftware discussion forums)
Palindromic advice from a priest to William Tell.
Pray tell, William Dear, is that child your target? You, as father,
cry, but despair will not do. Do not, Will, despair but cry "Father!"
as you target your child. That is, dear William Tell, pray!
-- Submitted to NPR's word-unit palindrome contest by Denis Hirschfeldt
(by way of
http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~chruska/recursive/palindrome.html)
"Formal Languages and Automata Theory" is "compiler construction made
difficult."
"Recursive Function Theory is Lisp made difficult"
- David Matuzek
(from http://www.netaxs.com/people/nerp/automata/church2.html)
If you threw a modern technical book in a fishtank it would float
cover-side-up, beginnings are so bloated and full of gas.
- bob foster (http://www.jroller.com/page/bobfoster/)
A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that life is two locked boxes
each containing the other's key.
-Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)
C++ is an eloquent testimonial for gun control!
Alan Perlis
From ACM's SIGPLAN publication, (September, 1982), Article "Epigrams in
Programming", by Alan J. Perlis of Yale University.
1. One man's constant is another man's variable.
2. Functions delay binding; data structures induce binding. Moral:
Structure data late in the programming process.
3. Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
4. Every program is a part of some other program and rarely fits.
5. If a program manipulates a large amount of data, it does so in a
small number of ways.
6. Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include
subroutines); seek it everywhere.
7. It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
8. A programming language is low level when its programs require
attention to the irrelevant.
9. It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure
than 10 functions on 10 data structures.
10. Get into a rut early: Do the same process the same way. Accumulate
idioms. Standardize. The only difference(!) between Shakespeare and you
was the size of his idiom list - not the size of his vocabulary.
11. If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed
some.
12. Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description
for time.
13. If two people write exactly the same program, each should be put
into microcode and then they certainly won't be the same.
14. In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble.
15. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
16. Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was
written, and another for which it wasn't.
17. If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program,
wake him up.
18. A program without a loop and a structured variable isn't worth
writing.
19. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming,
is not worth knowing.
20. Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for
misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check
communication.
21. Optimization hinders evolution.
22. A good system can't have a weak command language.
23. To understand a program you must become both the machine and the
program.
24. Perhaps if we wrote programs from childhood on, as adults we'd be
able to read them.
25. One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing,
movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the
static picture, no matter how lovely.
26. There will always be things we wish to say in our programs that in
all known languages can only be said poorly.
27. Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to
write it.
28. Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time
to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can
you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
29. For systems, the analogue of a face-lift is to add to the control
graph an edge that creates a cycle, not just an additional node.
30. In programming, everything we do is a special case of something
more general -- and often we know it too quickly.
31. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
32. Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their
logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
33. The eleventh commandment was "Thou Shalt Compute" or "Thou Shalt
Not Compute" - I forget which.
34. The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed
there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for
hiding information.
35. Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught not to. So it is with great programmers.
36. The use of a program to prove the 4-color theorem will not change
mathematics - it merely demonstrates that the theorem, a challenge for
a century, is probably not important to mathematics.
37. The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and
ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standarization of
real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.
38. Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded middle.
39. Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to
describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
described with pictures.
40. There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one
works.
41. Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
progress.
42. You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude
on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
43. In software systems, it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
44.Sometimes I think the only universal in the computing field is the
fetch-execute cycle.
45. The goal of computation is the emulation of our synthetic
abilities, not the understanding of our analytic ones.
46. Like punning, programming is a play on words.
47. As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
variable."
48. The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in
Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the
layman.
49. Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
50. When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
except our fingertips will have been singed.
51. Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
52. Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub- systems and so
on ad infinitum - which is why we're always starting over.
53. So many good ideas are never heard from again once they embark in a
voyage on the semantic gulf.
54. Beware of the Turing tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
55. A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
56. Software is under a constant tension. Being symbolic it is
arbitrarily perfectible; but also it is arbitrarily changeable.
57. It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than
vice versa.
58. Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it.
Geniuses remove it.
59. In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
60. In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
61. In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be
reborn.
62. In computing, invariants are ephemeral.
63. When we write programs that "learn", it turns out that we do and
they don't.
64. Often it is the means that justify the ends: Goals advance
technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.
65. Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols.
We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we
can arithmetize an activity.
66. Making something variable is easy. Controlling duration of
constancy is the trick.
67. Think of all the psychic energy expended in seeking a fundamental
distinction between "algorithm" and "program".
68. If we believe in data structures, we must believe in independent
(hence simultaneous) processing. For why else would we collect items
within a structure? Why do we tolerate languages that give us the one
without the other?
69. In a 5 year period we get one superb programming language. Only we
can't control when the 5 year period will be.
70. Over the centuries the Indians developed sign language for
communicating phenomena of interest. Programmers from different tribes
(FORTRAN, LISP, ALGOL, SNOBOL, etc.) could use one that doesn't require
them to carry a blackboard on their ponies.
71. Documentation is like term insurance: It satisfies because almost
no one who subscribes to it depends on its benefits.
72. An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.
73. It is not a language's weakness but its strengths that control the
gradient of its change: Alas, a language never escapes its embryonic
sac.
74. Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap
bubble?
75. Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate
need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
76. It is the user who should parameterize procedures, not their
creators.
77. The cybernetic exchange between man, computer and algorithm is like
a game of musical chairs: The frantic search for balance always leaves
one of the three standing ill at ease.
78. If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
79. A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one
believe in God.
80. Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into
clerks and vice versa.
81. In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living
definition of the word "frustration".
82. We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
theorem.
83. What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and
the establishment of a Hilton hotel on its peak.
84. Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will
first think of tomorrow.
85. Though the Chinese should adore APL, it's FORTRAN they put their
money on.
86. We kid ourselves if we think that the ratio of procedure to data in
an active data-base system can be made arbitrarily small or even kept
small.
87. We have the mini and the micro computer. In what semantic niche
would the pico computer fall?
88. It is not the computer's fault that Maxwell's equations are not
adequate to design the electric motor.
89. One does not learn computing by using a hand calculator, but one
can forget arithmetic.
90. Computation has made the tree flower.
91. The computer reminds one of Lon Chaney -- it is the machine of a
thousand faces.
92. The computer is the ultimate polluter: its feces are indistinguish-
able from the food it produces.
93. When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need
only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
94. Interfaces keep things tidy, but don't accelerate growth: Functions
do.
95. Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for
them.
96. Computers don't introduce order anywhere as much as they expose
opportunities.
97. When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have
compassion for his graduate students.
98. In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
99. In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines
can't.
100. We will never run out of things to program as long as there is a
single program around.
101. Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is
also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
improve.
102. One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
103. Purely applicative languages are poorly applicable.
104. The proof of a system's value is its existence.
105. You can't communicate complexity, only an awareness of it.
106. It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only
communication coin we can count on.
107. The debate rages on: is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
108. Whenever two programmers meet to criticize their programs, both
are silent.
109. Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACS in 1 sq. cm.
110. Editing is a rewording activity.
111. Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is Latin for office
automation?
112. Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
113. The only constructive theory connecting neuroscience and
psychology will arise from the study of software.
114. Within a computer natural language is unnatural.
115. Most people find the concept of programming obvious, but the doing
impossible.
116. You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can
write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
117. It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be
self-critical?
118. If you can imagine a society in which the computer- robot is the
only menial, you can imagine anything.
119. Programming is an unnatural act.
120. Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting
new machines to behave like old ones.
From ACM's SIGPLAN publication, (September, 1982), Article "Epigrams in
Programming", by Alan J. Perlis of Yale University.
-
Geek humor: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who
understand binary, and those who don't." - via banny
Baroque: Somthing that borders on its own parody -- Jorge Luis Borges’
"Historia universal de la infamia"
.....why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
-- Robert Frost (Black Cottage)
On theory vs practice: Once there were two research groups, one
American and one French. The American group had solved a practical
problem. The French group looked at their solution and said "very nice,
but will it work in theory?" anonymous -- via Mathias Felleisen's page,
(http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/)
Q: What is the shortest lie in computing? A: It works.
More on Programming: Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining
your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. John
F. Woods
Cambridge lecturer quotes from this collection
Alan Mycroft:
"I know it's not an object, it's a prepositional phrase, but that's not
my subject." (CC) - Alan Mycroft
"L1...Ll, R1...Rr... oh, aren't I being witty." (CC)
"What I want to do is sort of seed in your mind a gentle unease..." (CC)
"It's very easy to say 'yex' and 'lacc'. Now I'm going to talk to you
about yex." (CC)
Arthur Norman:
"MOVE employee TO waste-paper-bin CANCELLING AS YOU GO ADDING blood."
(FFP)
(about COBOL)
I frequently send myself encrypted messages, but I can never decode
them so I don't know what I'm talking about
I believe all Computer Scientists have a natural affinity with anything
called 'lazy'
"A theorem is just a friend you have not met yet, ...and only when it
bites you on the hand do you adopt a more cautious approach"
--Dr Korner
"I'm sure this is a mistake, if only because I make one mistake each
lecture and there's only ten minutes left"
--Prof. Grimlett
"I don't care what the polls say. I'm doing what I think
what's wrong."
George W. Bush
VMS is like a Soviet railroad train. It's basically
industrial-strength, but when you look at it closely, everything's a
little more shabby than you might like. It gets the job done, but
there's no grace to it.
Unix is like the maritime transit system in an impoverished country.
The ferryboats are dangerous as hell, offer no protection from the
weather and leak like sieves. Every monsoon season a couple of them
capsize and drown all the passengers, but people still line up for them
and crowd aboard.
MS-DOS is like the US rail system. It's there, but people just ignore
it and find other ways of getting where they want to go.
--- Posted by Paul A. Vixie to rec.humor in March 1991
When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a
thumb.
-- Steve Haflich in alt.lang.design, December 1994
C++ is like teenage sex:
-- toilet graffito at the Technion CS department in Haifa,
Israel, 1993-11-08 [ornate PS version]
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said
to be living apart.
- e e cummings
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again; it
was probably worth it.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit
oneself until one is amazed at one's luck
-- Iris Murdoch
I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money.
I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok. --
Shaquille O'Neal
All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me
happy.
- Spike Milligan
We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.
- Jason Kidd
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