This challenge, viz. the confrontation with the programming task, is so
unique that this novel experience can teach us a lot about ourselves. It
should deepen our understanding of the processes of design and creation,
it should give us better control over the task of organizing our
thoughts. If it did not do so, to my taste we should no deserve the
computer at all! It has allready taught us a few lessons, and the one I
have chosen to stress in this talk is the following. We shall do a much
better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full
appreciation of its tremenduous difficulty, provided that we stick to
modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the
intrinsec limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very
Humble Programmers.
-- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer
RE: Bye Steem!
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Bye Steem!
Programming is the art of figuring out what you want so precisely that
even a machine can do it.
-- Some guy who isn't famous
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Something Confusing about "Hard":
It's tempting to think that if it's hard, then it's valuable.
Most valuable things are hard.
Most hard things are completely useless -- (picture of someone smashing
their head through concrete blocks kung-fu style).
Hard DOES NOT EQUATE TO BEING valuable.
Remember Friendster back in the day?
You'd sign in, invite friends, have 25 friends, go to their profile, and
then it'd show how you were connected to each one.
That's an impressive [some geeky CS jargon] Cone traversal of a tree -
100 million string comparisons per page -- it won't scale.
Used to take a minute per page to load, and Friendster died a painful
death.
MySpace -- not interested in solving problems
They use the shortcut of "Miss Fitzpatrick is in your extended network"
(i.e. even when you're not even signed up for MySpace)
They didn't solve the hard problem. But they make the more relevant
assumption that you want to be connected to hot women. [LOL]
Shows Alexa graph showing that in early 2005 Myspace took off, and
quickly bypassed Friendster and never looked back.
-- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007
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What Paul does, and does very well, is to take ideas and concepts that
are beautiful in the abstract, and brings them down to a real world
level. That's a rare talent to find in writing these days.
-- Jeff "hemos" Bates, Director, OSDN; Co-evolver, Slashdot
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PI seconds is a nanocentury.
-- [fact]
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The greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak.
-- J. B. Bossuet, Politics from Holy Writ, 1709
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Functional programming is to algorithms as the ubiquitous little black
dress is to women's fashion.
-- Mark Tarver (of "The bipolar Lisp programmer" fame)
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We will never become a truly paper-less society until the Palm Pilot
folks come out with WipeMe 1.0.
-- Andy Pierson
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The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only
off by a bit.
-- Anonymous
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Never do the impossible. People will expect you to do it forever after.
-- pigsandfishes.com
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I think that a lot of programmers are ignoring an important point when
people talk about reducing code repetition on large projects.
Part of the idea is that large projects are intrinsically wrong. That
you should be looking at making a number of smaller projects that are
composable, even if you never end up reusing one of those smaller
projects elsewhere.
-- Dan Nugent
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The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be
regarded as a criminal offense.
-- E.W. Dijkstra
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Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
-- Earl of Chesterfield
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Fools! Don't they know that tears are a woman's most effective weapon?
-- Catwoman (The Batman TV Series, episode 83)
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Students should be evaluated on how well they can achieve the goals they
strived to achieve within a realistic context. Students need to learn to
do things, not know things.
-- Roger Schank, Engines for Education
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The problem is that small examples fail to convince, and large examples
are too big to follow.
-- Steve Yegge.
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That is one of the most distinctive differences between school and the
real world: there is no reward for putting in a good effort. In fact,
the whole concept of a "good effort" is a fake idea adults invented to
encourage kids. It is not found in nature.
-- Paul Graham
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All great things require great dedication.
-- Chuck Norris(?)
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A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is
obscure.
-- Hugh Kingsmill
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You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can
handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then
handle five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more
ease, more mastery and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.
-- Pablo Picasso
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Understanding why C++ is the way it is helps a programmer use it well. A deep
understanding of a tool is essential for an expert craftsman.
-- Bjarne Stroustrap
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It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students
that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they
are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- E. W. Dijkstra
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Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity. They are
rare, much rarer than you think...
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan".
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I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves
to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter.
-- "Hoots"
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You think you know when you learn, are more sure when you can write,
even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
-- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)
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Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc,
informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common
Lisp.
-- Philip Greenspun (Greenspun's Tenth Rule)
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Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
-- Randy Pausch
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Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a
while, you could miss it.
-- Ferris Bueller
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The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The
courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change
course when they find better evidence.
The quest for management magic and breakthrough ideas is overrated;
being a master of the obvious is underrated.
Jim Maloney is right: Work is an overrated activity
-- Bob Sutton
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If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.
-- Mario Andretti
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If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as lines
produced but as lines spent.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.
-- Sherlock Holmes
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