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
I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot
now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be
graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't
tell is whether they have any kind of taste."
-- Paul Graham
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)
No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get half wrong anyway. So
don’t do the ‘paralysis through analysis’ thing. That only slows
progress and saps morale.
-- 37 Signal, Getting real
It's like a condom; I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and
not have it.
-- some chick in Alien vs. Predator, when asked why she
always carries a gun
Functional programming is to algorithms as the ubiquitous little black
dress is to women's fashion.
-- Mark Tarver (of "The bipolar Lisp programmer" fame)
To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can
preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try
to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If
you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably
is.
-- Paul Graham.
It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to
be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.
-- Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)
Il y a très loin de la velléité à la volnt, de la volonté à la résolution, de la
résolution au choix des moyens, du choix ds moyens à lapplication.
-- Jean-François Paul de Gondi de Retz
What do Americans look for in a car? I've heard many answers when I've
asked this question. The answers include excellent safety ratings, great
gas mileage, handling, and cornering ability, among others. I don't
believe any of these. That's because the first principle of the Culture
Code is that the only effective way to understand what people truly mean
is to ignore what they say. This is not to suggest that people
intentionally lie or misrepresent themselves. What it means is that,
when asked direct questions about their interests and preferences,
people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear.
Again, this is not because they intend to mislead. It is because people
respond to these questions with their cortexes, the parts of their
brains that control intelligence rather than emotion or instinct. They
ponder a question, they process a question, and when they deliver an
answer, it is the product of deliberation. They believe they are telling
the truth. A lie detector would confirm this. In most cases, however,
they aren't saying what they mean.
-- The culture code.
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible
to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with
such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
-- John Von Neumann, circa 1949
You will never become a Great Programmer until you acknowledge that you
will always be a Terrible Programmer.
You will remain a Great Programmer for only as long as you acknowledge
that you are still a Terrible Programmer.
-- Marc (http://kickin-the-darkness.blogspot.com/)
The general principle for complexity design is this: Think locally, act
locally.
-- Richard P. Gabriel & Ron Goldman, Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code
A tail call allows a function to return the result of another function
without leaving an entry on the stack. Tail recursion is a specific case
of tail calling.
-- ASPN : Python Cookbook : Explicit Tail Call
Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.
-- Erik Naggum
:nunmap can also be used outside of a monastery.
-- Vim user manual
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.
-- Earl of Chesterfield
Revolutions come from standing on the shoulders of giants and facing in
a better direction.
-- Alan Kay
A non negative binary integer value x is a power of 2 iff (x & (x-1)) is
0 using 2's complement arithmetic.
-- [fact]
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
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and
reflect.
-- Mark Twain
I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot
now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be
graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't
tell is whether they have any kind of taste."
-- Paul Graham
I think there’s a world market for about 5 computers.
-- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM, circa 1948
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)
Bonne bosse et reste le boss.
-- Darryl Amedon
Simplicity and pragmatism beat complexity and theory any day.
-- Dennis (blog comment)
No matter how much you plan you’re likely to get half wrong anyway. So
don’t do the ‘paralysis through analysis’ thing. That only slows
progress and saps morale.
-- 37 Signal, Getting real
The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops
until you stand up to speak in public.
-- Anonymous
We are the sum of our behaviours; excellence therefore is not an act but
a habit.
-- Aristotle.
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
-- Randy Pausch
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- LaoTzu
The greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak.
-- J. B. Bossuet, Politics from Holy Writ, 1709
New eyes have X-ray vision. [someone that hasn't written it is more
likely to spot the bug. "someone" can be you after a break]
-- William S. Annis
It's like a condom; I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and
not have it.
-- some chick in Alien vs. Predator, when asked why she
always carries a gun
Software is like sex: It’s better when it’s free.
-- Linus Torvalds
Functional programming is to algorithms as the ubiquitous little black
dress is to women's fashion.
-- Mark Tarver (of "The bipolar Lisp programmer" fame)
To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can
preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try
to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If
you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably
is.
-- Paul Graham.
What is truth?
-- Pontius Pilate
It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to
be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.
-- Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be
regarded as a criminal offense.
-- E.W. Dijkstra
Il y a très loin de la velléité à la volnt, de la volonté à la résolution, de la
résolution au choix des moyens, du choix ds moyens à lapplication.
-- Jean-François Paul de Gondi de Retz
If there is a will, there is a way.
-- unknown
All creativity is an extended form of a joke.
-- Alan Kay
What do Americans look for in a car? I've heard many answers when I've
asked this question. The answers include excellent safety ratings, great
gas mileage, handling, and cornering ability, among others. I don't
believe any of these. That's because the first principle of the Culture
Code is that the only effective way to understand what people truly mean
is to ignore what they say. This is not to suggest that people
intentionally lie or misrepresent themselves. What it means is that,
when asked direct questions about their interests and preferences,
people tend to give answers they believe the questioner wants to hear.
Again, this is not because they intend to mislead. It is because people
respond to these questions with their cortexes, the parts of their
brains that control intelligence rather than emotion or instinct. They
ponder a question, they process a question, and when they deliver an
answer, it is the product of deliberation. They believe they are telling
the truth. A lie detector would confirm this. In most cases, however,
they aren't saying what they mean.
-- The culture code.
To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
-- L. Peter Deutsch
Just like carpentry, measure twice cut once.
-- Super-sizing YouTube with Python (Mike Solomon, [email protected])
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-- Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible
to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with
such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
-- John Von Neumann, circa 1949
Linux is only free if your time has no value.
-- Jamie Zawinski
You will never become a Great Programmer until you acknowledge that you
will always be a Terrible Programmer.
You will remain a Great Programmer for only as long as you acknowledge
that you are still a Terrible Programmer.
-- Marc (http://kickin-the-darkness.blogspot.com/)
The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you get a round one.
-- Douglas Crockford (Author of JSON and JsLint)
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new
machines to behave like old ones.
-- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)
The general principle for complexity design is this: Think locally, act
locally.
-- Richard P. Gabriel & Ron Goldman, Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code
https://tenor.com/view/melken-marco-kraats-milking-gif-13621530
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
-- Ancient Eastern adage
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and
reflect.
-- Mark Twain
The wonderful and frustrating thing about understanding yourself is that
nobody can do it for you.
-- BetterExplained.com
A tail call allows a function to return the result of another function
without leaving an entry on the stack. Tail recursion is a specific case
of tail calling.
-- ASPN : Python Cookbook : Explicit Tail Call
There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire
just might be procrastination.
-- Hara Estroff Marano.
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally
better than your dreams.
-- Dr. Seuss