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Quote of the Day

Please append your quote of the day to the bottom of this page, separating it from the others by a line with just a '_' (underscore). Do not put an underscore '_' after the last quote -- if you do, you will get a blank QotD.

"Systems Programmers are high priests of a low cult." -- Bob Barton

"To iterate is human, to recur, divine" -- Peter Deutsch

"Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life." -- Bertolt Brecht

Real life is that big, high-res, high-color screen saver behind all the windows. -- anonymous

"In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." -- Eric Hoffer

"I cannot articulate enough to express my dislike to people who think that understanding spoils your experience... How would they know?" -- Marvin Minsky

"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing." -- Alan J. Perlis

"It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?" -- Alan J. Perlis

"A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant." -- Alan J. Perlis

"A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God." -- Alan J. Perlis

"It wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. " -- Wilkes, 1949

"Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" -- TS Eliot, Choruses from the Rock

"what if a much of a which of a wind gives truth to summer's lie" -- e e cummings jla

"Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve." -- Alan J. Perlis

"Man tut nicht wohl, sich allzulange im Abstrakten aufzuhalten." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (18??)(something like: "You're not doing yourself a pleasure, if you stay too long in abstractions.")

"It serves one well not to dabble in abstractions too long." -- J.W. Goethe

"Reality is merely an illusion,albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works ofShakespeare. Now, thanks to theInternet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky

The tree of research must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of bean counters. -- Alan Kay

If we learn best by playing, Then we need lifelong kindergarten -- If/Then

"Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it." -- Alan J. Perlis

"The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn when teachers themselves are taught to learn." -- Bertolt Brecht

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein

"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." -- Kahlil Gibran

The best way to predict the future is by using Squeak.

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. -- Albert Einstein

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money. -- Leon Lenderman

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? -- Albert Einstein

Logic . . . merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
-- Alan J. Perlis

Programming from spec is like walking on water...
it's easier to do when it's frozen

Use the Source, Luke!
May the Source be with you.

As soon as I make it idiot-proof,
someone goes and invents a better class of idiot

It works when we run it

Programmer: "This is gonna take me 3 months..."
Boss: "Why? IT'S JUST A COUPLE LINES OF CODE!"

Life is a box of chocolates.

Come writers and critics, who prophesize with your pens
And keep your eyes wide, the change won't come again
And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin
And there is no telling who that its's namin'
For the losers now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'
- Bob Dylan

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies."
-- Groucho Marx

Authority. . . merely enables one to be wrong about logic. -- Who's Doctor?

Indecision is the key to flexibility

I have heard the future, and it sounds a little Squeaky.

``Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.''
-- Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

Java, the best argument for Smalltalk since C++.

Programming is debugging a blank sheet of paper. -- Gerald Sussman

Computers are useless; they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso

If the Computer is a universal control system, let's give kids universes to control. -- Theodore H. Nelson (1974)

An Interface is what gets in between you and what you want to do -- Carl Havermiste

Education is typically the process of successively ruinning subjects for you, and the last subject to be ruined determines your profession -- Theodore H. Nelson, "Literary Machines 93.1"

Life would be so much easier if we could just see the source code.

Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.

Having the source code is the difference between buying a house and renting an apartment -- Behlendorf.

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. -- Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man Month.

During translation you should not fall into a direct war with the strange language. You should only progress till the untranslatable and respect that border; because there is where you'll find the value and character of every language. -- Goethe 1827. (in German)

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." --Donald Knuth (1977)

"C++ : an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog" --unknown

"Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like saying that K2 is shorter than Everest." --Larry O'Brien (editor, Software Development)

"I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." --Alan Kay

"C combines all the power of assembly language with all the ease of use of assembly language" --trad

"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." -- Rich Cook

"All progress is a process of creative destruction, wherein the hardest, but most important, decisions involve what must be pruned in order to free up the resources needed for new, more vigorous growth."
-- Henry G. Baker

"Specifying an object, sending it a message, and getting back another object as the result are the only things that ever happen in Smalltalk code"
-- Ted Kaehler/ Dave Patterson, A Taste of Smalltalk

"God is real unless declared integer"
-- david

"It is necessary to recover the primeval force of the shock taking place at the moment when opposite a man (the viewer) there stood for the first time a man (the actor) deceptively similar to us, yet at the same time infinitely foreign, beyond an impassable barrier." -- Tadeusz Kantor

"Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear." -- Bertolt Brecht

"It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all" -- from So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, by Douglas Adams

"The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, but in practice there is." -- Craig A. Finseth

"The main problem for the C++ community today is to use StandardC++ in the way it was intended rather than as a glorified C or a poor man's Smalltalk." -- Bjarne Stroustrup

"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing." -- Dick Brandon

"Denken, Abstrakt? Sauve qui peut". --GWF Hegel.
(Thinking, abstract? Save yourself who can).

"God save the image". --Unknown Smalltalker.

"Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS." -- Alan Kay

"Java: the elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed of Smalltalk." -- Roland Turner

"I have found that humans often use Smalltalk during awkward moments." -- Commander Data, ST TNG

"The community isn't nearly as afraid as it thinks it is." -- Kent Beck

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. -- Howard Phillips Lovecraft

"Quotation confesses inferiority." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reason never changed a man's opinion which by reason he never acquired. -- Mark Twain

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. -- Mark Twain

"Think Different! Think YottaHertz!" -- Lantz (after Apple)

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. -- Goethe

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. -- Rabindranath Tagore

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. -- Abraham Maslow

If you only have nails, stick with hammers. --Bijan Parsia

Honesty subverts! -- Kendall Clark

Linux is like a wigwam. No windows, no gates and an apache inside. -- Someone

The greatest programming project of all took six days; on the seventh day the programmer rested.

"Many who claim to have graduated into 'the real world' settled for the hard knock and missed the lesson." -Vanna Bonta

"Those who do not contribute are condemned to see the same quote again and again"

Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. -Andy Bower

"No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical." --Niels Bohr

"Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties." -Doug Larson

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

Smalltalk _ nil. The best way to restore an image.

PhotoSqueak. An even better way to restore an image.

"Sometimes, the best answer is a more interesting question" Terry Pratchett