That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.
Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.
At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.
One purpose of CRC cards [a design tool] is to fail early, to fail often, and to fail inexpensively. It is a lot cheaper to tear up a bunch of cards that it would be to reorganize a large amount of source code.
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.
If you think about computer programming, it's as antisocial as it gets.
We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.
There is a race between the increasing complexity of the systems we build and our ability to develop intellectual tools for understanding their complexity. If the race is won by our tools, then systems will eventually become easier to use and more reliable. If not, they will continue to become harder to use and less reliable for all but a relatively small set of common tasks. Given how hard thinking is, if those intellectual tools are to succeed, they will have to substitute calculation for thought.
It is not about bits, bytes and protocols, but profits, losses and margins.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
The important point is that the cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. Sure, any given feature list can be implemented, given enough coding time. But in addition to coming out late, you will usually wind up with a codebase that is so fragile that new ideas that should be dead-simple wind up taking longer and longer to work into the tangled existing web. The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.
One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching.
Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
They know enough who know how to learn.
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.
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