La tactique, c'est ce que vous faites quand il y a quelque chose à
faire; la stratégie, c'est ce que vous faites quand il n'y a rien à
faire.
-- Xavier Tartacover
Since programmers create programs out of nothing, imagination is our
only limitation. Thus, in the world of programming, the hero is the one
who has great vision. Paul Graham is one of our contemporary heroes. He
has the ability to embrace the vision, and to express it plainly. His
works are my favorites, especially the ones describing language design.
He explains secrets of programming, languages, and human nature that can
only be learned from the hacker experience. This book shows you his
great vision, and tells you the truth about the nature of hacking.
-- Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator of Ruby
Actually, the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for
novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless
richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.
-- George Leonard, Mastery.
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
You have to write for your audience. I would never write (1..5).map
&'*2' in Java when I could write
ListFactoryFactory.getListFactoryFromResource(
new ResourceName('com.javax.magnitudes.integers').
setLowerBound(1).setUpperBound(5).setStep(1).applyFunctor(
new Functor () { public void eval (x) { return x * 2; } }))
I'm simplifying, of course, I've left out the security and logging
wrappers.
-- Reginald Braithwait
La haine est une liqueur précieuse, un poison plus cher que celui des
Borgia, - car il est fait avec notre sang, notre santé, notre sommeil,
et les deux tiers de notre amour! Il faut en être avare!
-- Charles Baudelaire, Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs.
Hence my urgent advice to all of you to reject the morals of the
bestseller society and to find, to start with, your reward in your own
fun. This is quite feasible, for the challenge of simplification is so
fascinating that, if we do our job properly, we shall have the greatest
fun in the world.
-- E. W. Dijkstra, On the nature of computing science.
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).
1 - Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
2 - The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
3 - Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
4 - Ours is less and less a free society.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
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
A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few
months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would
have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that
certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other
workers, or more.
-- Peter Seebach
C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.
-- Scott McKay
J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de
l'indifférence.
-- Anatole France
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
-- Thomas Edison
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.
Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
-- Alan Kay
The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create
more leaders.
-- Ralph Nader
Photography is painting with light.
-- Eric Hamilton
La tactique, c'est ce que vous faites quand il y a quelque chose à
faire; la stratégie, c'est ce que vous faites quand il n'y a rien à
faire.
-- Xavier Tartacover
Since programmers create programs out of nothing, imagination is our
only limitation. Thus, in the world of programming, the hero is the one
who has great vision. Paul Graham is one of our contemporary heroes. He
has the ability to embrace the vision, and to express it plainly. His
works are my favorites, especially the ones describing language design.
He explains secrets of programming, languages, and human nature that can
only be learned from the hacker experience. This book shows you his
great vision, and tells you the truth about the nature of hacking.
-- Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator of Ruby
Actually, the essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for
novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless
richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.
-- George Leonard, Mastery.
In terms of energy, it's better to make a wrong choice than none at all.
-- George Leonard, Mastery.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it.
Geniuses remove it.
-- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programming)
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
Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.
-- Seneca
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
XML wasn't designed to be edited by humans on a regular basis.
-- Guido van Rossum
You have to write for your audience. I would never write (1..5).map
&'*2' in Java when I could write
ListFactoryFactory.getListFactoryFromResource(
new ResourceName('com.javax.magnitudes.integers').
setLowerBound(1).setUpperBound(5).setStep(1).applyFunctor(
new Functor () { public void eval (x) { return x * 2; } }))
I'm simplifying, of course, I've left out the security and logging
wrappers.
-- Reginald Braithwait
Code is poetry.
-- wordpress.org
La haine est une liqueur précieuse, un poison plus cher que celui des
Borgia, - car il est fait avec notre sang, notre santé, notre sommeil,
et les deux tiers de notre amour! Il faut en être avare!
-- Charles Baudelaire, Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs.
-- [Ideas for flamewars]
Hence my urgent advice to all of you to reject the morals of the
bestseller society and to find, to start with, your reward in your own
fun. This is quite feasible, for the challenge of simplification is so
fascinating that, if we do our job properly, we shall have the greatest
fun in the world.
-- E. W. Dijkstra, On the nature of computing science.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and
reflect.
-- Mark Twain
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected
without, I thought, proper consideration.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle
Making All Software Into Tools Reduces Risk.
-- smoothspan.com
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).
A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is
obscure.
-- Hugh Kingsmill
1 - Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
2 - The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
3 - Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
4 - Ours is less and less a free society.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
Des mots simples, quand ils sont bien utilisés, font faire à des gens
ordinaires des choses extraordinaires.
-- Khaled TANGAO
Ce n’est que par les beaux sentiments qu’on parvient à la fortune !
-- Charles Baudelaire, Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs.
Courage is grace under pressure.
-- Ernest Hemingway
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
A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few
months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would
have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that
certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other
workers, or more.
-- Peter Seebach
For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing
them.
-- Aristotle.