Technology
Computer geek stuff.
Quotes (61)
Software programmers have more in common with masons than with engineers. Engineering, real engineering, not programming, is problem solving divorced from the needs of actual people.
Most people know more about how the Vatican works than what programmers do.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving and existing one.
"This is a consistent problem that comes and goes."
"They are ready to sell us their back end."
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off."
"Think of using DOS as flicking your wrist to avoid an obstacle while driving a Formula One racer, compared with tapping on the partition glass to ask the driver of your bulletproof Windows NT limousine: "What was that thump? The champagne jiggled."
I suspect the claims that the GPL "violates the U.S. Constitution" will get recorded in some historical analysis of corporate Tourette's syndrome.
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"You will be able to appreciate the influence of such an Engine on the future progress of science. I live in a country which is incapable of estimating it."
"It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are."
"It sounds like an oversimplified complicated version of what they want to do."
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
"No one just sits and reads UNIX books for fun; it just isn't done."
"Just be aware that you will be confused."
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
"No matter how clever the hardware boys are, the software boys will piss it away."
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
"I do not fear computers, I fear the lack of them."
"We just want it to work."
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying."
"We need men who can dream of things that never were."
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
"Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in. (Other than that, it's quite a nice language.)"
"The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris."
"Tesla came over from Graz and went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison couldn't stand Tesla for several reasons. One was that Tesla showed up for work every day in formal dress - morning coat, spats, top hat and gloves - and this just wasn't the American Way at the time. Edison also hated Tesla because Tesla invented so many things while wearing these clothes."
The tradition of open source has done more to build the modern economy than Microsoft every will.
"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents."
"It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail."
For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics. It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.
Finally, from my experiences a fun environment is a must for creative people. Agree or not, software developers are some of the most creative and imaginative people on the planet. Building software is as much art as science and will be for many years to come. If you are surrounded by people in suits and cube farms, then creativity is probably suffocating in a constipated bureaucracy. And, besides, it is difficult to get sufficient blood to your creative brain with a constrictive leash around your throat.
"It's like playing Jenga with code."
Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation.
Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.
Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.
"I get a top of the line phone, but imitation wheat thins."
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea
that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the
public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged
with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing
circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is
supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or
individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock
of history be stopped, or turned back."
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside."
"It is in games that many men discover their paradise."
"If you have any problems at all, don't hesitate to shut up."
"That's why they regard Macintosh as a toy; it's got that crap all over it."
"You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers."
"This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access."
"Build a machine even a fool could use, and only a fool will want to use it."
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
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"Code is great, so we'll be nice."
Distributed applications are great, but sometimes when we put Humpty Dumpy together again we end up with Mr. Potato Head.
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To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
"Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world."
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"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."
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"The problem with using bleeding edge technology is that the blood on the floor ends up being yours."
"Computers aren't intelligent, they only think they are."
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"If it wasn't for C, we'd be using BASI, Pasal, and OBOL."
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"In place of infinity we usually put some really big number, like 15."
"The magnitude of this hack compares favorably with that of the national debt."
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"Nothing you can't spell will ever work."