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The wonderful and frustrating thing about understanding yourself is that
nobody can do it for you.
-- BetterExplained.com

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

Workers of the world, the chains that bind you are not held in place by
a ruling class, a "superior" race, by society, the state, or a leader.
They are held in place by none other than yourself. Those who seek to
exploit are not themselves free, for they place no value in freedom. Who
is it that really employs you and commands you to pick up your daily
load? And who is it that you allow to pass judgment on the adequacy of
your toil? Who have you empowered to dangle the carrot before you and
threaten with disapproval? Who, when you wake each morning, sends you
off to what you call your work?
Is there an "I want to" behind all your "I have to," or have you been so
long forgotten to yourself that "I want" exists only as an idea in your
head? If you have disconnected from your soul's desire and are drowning
in an ocean of "have to," then rise up and overthrow your master. Begin
the journey toward emancipation. Work only in such a way that you are
truly self-employed.
-- Tim Gallwey, The inner game of work

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing
them.
-- Aristotle.

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be
regarded as a criminal offense.
-- E.W. Dijkstra

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's
a duck.
-- Official definition of "duck typing"

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

If something isn’t working, you need to look back and figure out what
got you excited in the first place.
-- David Gorman (ImThere.com)

Talkers are no good doers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
-- Colin Powell

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

Acknowledging the negative doesn't mean sniveling [whining, complaining]; it
means facing the truth and then moving on.
-- George Leonard, Mastery.

Only make new mistakes.
-- Phil Dourado

When you’ve got the code all ripped apart, it’s like a car that’s all
disassembled. You’ve got all the parts tying all over your garage and
you have to replace the broken part or the car will never run. It’s not
fun until the code gets back to the baseline again.
-- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it
right, it is obvious that it is right.
-- Richard Feynman

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
-- John Lennon

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)

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

It is better to be quiet and thought a fool than to open your mouth and
remove all doubt.
-- WikiHow

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
themselves upon execution.
-- Robert Sewell

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new
semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
-- Edsger Dijkstra

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

Be the change you want to see in the world.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

In OO, it's the data that is the "important" thing: you define the class
which contains member data, and only incidentally contains code for
manipulating the object. In FP, it's the code that's important: you
define a function which contains code for working with the data, and
only incidentally define what the data is.
-- almkgor, on reddit

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without
necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including
blind stupidity.
-- W.A. Wulf

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature,
because God is not capricious or arbitrary.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao­Tzu

Rules of Optimization:
Rule 1: Don’t do it.
Rule 2 (for experts only): Don’t do it yet.
-- M.A. Jackson

  ·  5 years ago Reveal Comment