It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired.
Lazarus Long, _Time Enough For Love_, by Robert A. Heinlein
You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.
Jubal Harshaw, _Stranger in a Strange Land_, by Robert A. Heinlein
There's always a choice! This one is a choice between 'bad' and 'worse'—which is a difference much more poignant than that between 'good' and 'better.'”
Jubal Harshaw, _Stranger in a Strange Land_, by Robert A. Heinlein
We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Larry Wall, _Programming Perl_ (1st edition)
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle you know nothing about.
John Watson (paraphrased)
An idea is not responsible for who believes in it
Don Marquis
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts
Richard Feynman
Tools are a handle at one end and opportunity at the other
Kevin Kelly
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.
Richard Bach
Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things....and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Walt Disney
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
Martin Luther King Jr.
We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.
J Robert Oppenheimer
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.... Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
The truth is true whether you wanna believe it or not, it doesn't need you to make it true.
Bob Dylan
Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.
Sawyer Rosenstein
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Brian Kernighan, "The Elements of Programming Style"
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
All Lisps have their attractions, and yet each
also has a niche. You can choose a Lisp for the busy person, a Lisp for
someone without much time, or a Lisp for the dedicated hobbyist, and you'll
find that no matter which one you choose, it's missing the library you need.
Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.
Daniel Burnham
XML is like violence: If it's not working, you're not using enough of it.
Also: Inefficient, messy, universally available, last resort of the incompetent, first resort of the seriously fucked in the head. Sax violence or Dom violence? Too much sax and violence these days. Standards set by international treaty organizations which everyone comes up with an excuse not to follow. Used by lesser minds as a solution to problems solved a long time ago. Often used because "It's the only thing those people understand"
Waterpoint denizens Ben, James, Ford and Chris
How to argue:
You must attempt to re-express your opponent's position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your opponent says "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way." Then, you should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement), and third, you should mention anything you have learned from your opponent. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism. When it succeeds, the results are gratifying: your opponent is in a mood to be enlightened and eagerly attentive.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Stephen Roberts
I'm a polyatheist - there are many gods I don't believe in.
Dan Fouts
Work like you don't need the money. Dance like no one is watching. Love like you've never been hurt.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Bones heal, Chicks dig scars, pain is temporary, glory is forever.
Never attribute to maliciousness that which can be explained by stupidity.
Ancient Usenet Wisdom
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by poor communications.
addendum to Ancient Usenet Wisdom
To every man is given the key to the gates of Heaven. The same key opens the gates of Hell.
ancient Buddhist proverb
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.
If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.
I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.
To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”
Salman Rushdie
The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
Alex Jason, Mythbusters ballistics expert. (popularized by Mythbusters' _Bouncing Bullet_ episode in 2012)
Code should make sense, otherwise it's not going to be maintainable.
Naming matters. If the code doesn't match the name of the function,
that's a bug regardless of whether it has semantic effects or not in
the end - because somebody will eventually depend on the _expected_
semantics.
Linus Torvalds, MsgID: CA+55aFzbbLZaWvg+vTEKrfzZkwb=iAVUK5cZu2LxdbevZiGJ2g@mail.gmail.com, copied to x86-at-kernel-org and linux-kernel-at-kernel-org
[at mail-archive]
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Rick Cook, _The Wizardry Compiled_
The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.
Rick Cook, _The Wizardry Compiled_
And that, by the way, is the cure for imposter syndrome: realize that the world is full of successful morons, so no matter how much of a moron you think you are, you're entitled to whatever success you have.
Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.
Robert Anton Wilson
/*
* W A R N I N G
*
* If you think you know what all of this code is doing, you are
* probably very mistaken. There be serious and nasty dragons here.
xterm/xterm.c
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
Douglas Adams
It's well known that the world isn't fair. Therefore anyplace it *looks* fair to you is probably just a place where it happens to be unfair in your favor.