quotes.vemod.net

A Modernist has to decide whether this is true OR that is true. The Modernist believes in OR more than AND. Postmodernists believe in AND more than OR.

We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people that you are, you are not.

Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity—it’s theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn’t feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it’s the best language in the world, but they’re willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism—there is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach—if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it’s not a language at all; others say that it’s the only language that makes sense.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

This kind of “I broke things, so now I will jiggle things randomly until they unbreak” is not acceptable. […] Don’t just make random changes. There really are only two acceptable models of development: “think and analyze” or “years and years of testing on thousands of machines”. Those two really do work.

A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point

A bad day writing code in Scheme is better than a good day writing code in C.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool that I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Lisp is so powerful that problems which are technical issues in other programming languages are social issues in Lisp.

Will write code that writes code that writes code that writes code for money.

Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.

No decent human being would allow an animal to suffer without putting it out of its misery. It is only to human beings that human beings are so cruel as to allow them to live on in pain, in hopelessness, in living death, without moving a muscle to help them.