Quotations :)
"The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
"People only rain on your parade because they don't have their own."
"A small thing repeated often enough, is a big thing."
"The future depends on what we do in the present"
"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
"Copy and paste is a design error"
"Simplicity carried to the extreme becomes elegance."
"You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
"Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement."
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."
"The best is the enemy of the good."
"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers."
Oath of Fealty
"Java is the blunt scissors of programming languages"
"If you believe that you know the requirements better than the customer, you are part of the problem, not the solution."
"Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new."
"I think high self-esteem is overrated. A little low self-esteem is actually quite good. Maybe you're not the best, so you should work a little harder."
"I appreciate people who are civil, whether they mean it or not. I think: Be civil. Do not cherish your opinion over my feelings. There's a vanity to candor that isn't really worth it. Be kind."
"Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change."
"If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first 6 hours sharpening my axe."
"Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it."
"Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable."
"Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought."
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
"Part of what I do is a craft, but part of what I do is a science. And I guess the craft comes in knowing what science to use and what science not to use."
"If you can't explain something to a six year-old, you really don't understand it yourself."
"To attain knowledge, add things everyday; to obtain wisdom, remove things everyday."
"Good style is the 'underware' that supports a program"
"Elegance is not optional."
"COMPUTER POWER TO THE PEOPLE! DOWN WITH CYBERCRUD!"
"I believe good software is written by small teams of two, three, or four people interacting with each other at a very, high dense level."
"Say what you mean, simply and directly"
"Write clearly - don't be too clever"
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction."
"At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry."
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
"In the elder days of art, builders wrought with greatest care, each minute and unseen part, for the Gods are everwhere"
"People don't quit playing because they grow old. They grow old because they quit playing."
"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it"
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
"Winners are losers who got up and gave it one more try."
"It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong."
"We need a language that lets us scribble and smudge and smear, not a language where you have to sit with a teacup of types balanced on your knee and make polite conversation with a strict old aunt of a compiler."
"Unnecessary complexity artificially raises the value of small accomplishments."
"Complexity is easy; Simplicity is hard."
"Billions of flies eat shit; doesn’t mean it’s good"
"The programmer using a batch-compiler language can seldom achieve the productive state of mind that artists achieve when the creative current is unhindered."
"Good thoughts bear good fruit. Bullshit thoughts rot your meat."
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
"Everyone's a star. Your shine is just different than mine!"
"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
"All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears."
"If you want to get anywhere in life, don't break the rules, make the rules!"
"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand."
"Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming"
"Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it."
"Static typing prevents certain kinds of failures. Unfortunately, it also prevents certain kinds of successes."
"Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot"
"If we were all using the same language, it would probably be the wrong one."
"If you think you're designing something for idiots, odds are you're not designing something good, even for idiots."
"In the church of complexity, more is always better..."
"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."
"In essence, Smalltalk is a programming language focused on human beings rather than the computer."
"I just need a will of my own and the balls to stand alone."
"Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence."
"To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often."
"Intelligence is like a river; the deeper it is the less noise it makes."
"Source code in files - how quaint."
"We should build the simplest working thing that could possibly be maintainable."
"Static Typing: Make it fast. Make it right. Make it run."
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
"A great person does not have to think consistently from one day to the next."
"Nothing is carved in stone. NOTHING! Everything is written in sand and is likely to be erased or unrecognizably altered by the next wave that sweeps over"
"Leadership is a state of mind as well as a set of behaviors. Our thoughts precede our actions."
"You cannot motivate another person. You have to create the environment for them to motivate themselves."
"OO programmers fall into two categories: Smalltalkers and those who don't get it."
"C for sinking, java for drinking, Smalltalk for thinking"
"It keeps me going you know, that and listening to heavy metal, and get caffeinated and hack."
When asked did he consider coke to be "brain food".
Watch Triumph Of The Nerds for the quote
Watch Triumph Of The Nerds for the quote
"This thing is my religion; My soul, my blood, my life; I am so fucking metal"
