Erik Naggum Quotes - Page 3

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• I have argued that a religion or a philosophy cannot speak about facts of the world - if it does, it is now or will eventually be wrong - but it can and should speak about the relevance and ranking of facts and observations.

  Erik Naggum

  Philosophy, Doe, World

  "Philosophy of Lisp programmers". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. June 22, 2002.

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• If car manufacturers made cars according to spec the same way software vendors make software according to spec, all five wheels would be of widely differing sizes, it would take one person to steer and another to work the pedals and yet another to operate the user-friendly menu-driven dashboard, and if it would not drive straight ahead without a lot of effort, civil engineers would respond by building spiraling roads around each city.

  Erik Naggum

  Cities, Car, Effort

  "What obstacles do Common Lisp programmers face?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. January 12, 2002.

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• Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.

  Erik Naggum

  People, Delight, Novelty

  "Ousterhout and Tcl lost the plot with latest paper". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. September 4, 1997.

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• Life is too long to be good at C++ – if you had spent all that time to become good at it, you would essentially have to work with it, too, to get back the costs, and that would just be some long, drawn-out torture.

  Erik Naggum

  Long, Cost, Life Is

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• Constructing a social system that tends to those who agree with it is a piece of cake compared to constructing one that makes those who disagree with it want to obey its principles.

  Erik Naggum

  Cake, Principles, Pieces

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• If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror.

  Erik Naggum

  Winning, Mirrors, Want

  Re: Java is really convenient. Re: Sun thinks about switching Java to S-expression syntax: Lava (Usenet article), groups.google.com. February 20, 1999.

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• I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain.

  Erik Naggum

  Pain, Cat, Affection

  Re: defmacro question (Usenet article), groups.google.com. July 26, 2000.

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• Like many older fans of Free Software and Open Source, I have discovered that it is really only free in the sense that the time you spend on it is worthless.

  Erik Naggum

  Fans, Source, Software

  "The Next Generation of Lisp Programmers". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 24, 2002.

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• Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer.

  Erik Naggum

  Technology, Microsoft, Answers

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• C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.

  Erik Naggum

  Meaningful, Memories, Writing

  Re: Allegro CL foreign function interface (Usenet article), groups.google.com. June 14, 2000.

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• Languages shape the way we think, or don't.

  Erik Naggum

  Thinking, Shapes, Way

  Re: Search & Replace in sequences (Usenet article), groups.google.com. March 20, 2000.

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• A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.

  Erik Naggum

  Engineering, People, Needs

  "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. September 28, 2002.

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• We have no mom-and-pop oil rigs in Norway.

  Erik Naggum

  Mom, Oil, Norway

  "Upper limits of CL". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. June 20, 2002.

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• From the Latin word "imponere", base of the obsolete English "impone" and translated as "impress" in modern English, Nordic hackers have coined the terms "imponator" (a device that does nothing but impress bystanders, referred to as the "imponator effect") and "imponade" (that "goo" that fills you as you get impressed with something - from "marmelade", often referred as "full of imponade", always ironic).

  Erik Naggum

  Latin, Bystanders, Ironic

  "Polymorphism in Common Lisp". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 18, 2001.

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• I have actually programmed a fair bit in Perl, like I have C++ code published with my name on it. Other things I have tried and have no intention to do again if I can at all avoid it include smoking, getting drunk enough to puke and waste the whole next day with hang-over, breaking a leg in a violent car crash, getting mugged in New York City, or travel with Aeroflot.

  Erik Naggum

  New York, Cities, Names

  Re: How is perl braindamaged? (was Re: Is LISP dying?) (Usenet article), groups.google.com. July 28, 1999.

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• Enlightenment is probably antithetical to impatience.

  Erik Naggum

  Enlightenment, Impatience

  "*Why* is LISP better?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. August 8, 2002.

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• XML is a giant step in no direction at all.

  Erik Naggum

  Giants, Steps

  "Q: parsing strings". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. October 10, 2000.

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• 'Code sharing' is an economic surplus phenomenon. It works only when none of the people involved in it are in any form of need.

  Erik Naggum

  People, Needs, Economic

  "Realistic but short and simple LISP examples?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. December 19, 2001.

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• If, however, one factor is too successful, it will continue to be the winning factor regardless of the variation in the other factors over the range of variation in the conditions, and therefore will stifle the development of other advantageous factors until the conditions change sufficiently that it no longer is the winning factor. At this point, the whole population is ill prepared for the change, and may well perish entirely if the winning factor accidentally becomes the matching factor for a disease or a predator.

  Erik Naggum

  Successful, Winning, Population

  "O'reilly subjugated to the Lisp juggenaut". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. January 18, 2004.

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• The only important property of evils of the past is that they not be repeated in the future, in any way, shape, or form.

  Erik Naggum

  Past, Evil, Important

  "Stalin is not a cool name for software". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. November 30, 1998.

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• The fundamental deficiency in HTML is that it reduces hypertext and the intertwinedness of human communication to a question of how it is rendered and what happens when you click on it. ... HTML is to the browser what PostScript is to the laser printer.

  Erik Naggum

  Communication, Html, Fundamentals

  "LISP and AI". Usenet article, groups.google.com. May 10, 2000.

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• Short of coming to their senses and abolishing the whole thing, we might expect that the rules for daylight saving time will remain the same for some time to come, but there is no guarantee. (We can only be glad there is no daylight loan time, or we would face decades of too much daylight, only to be faced with a few years of total darkness to make up for it.

  Erik Naggum

  Years, Darkness, Guarantees

  "The Long, Painful History of Time" by Erik Naggum, naggum.no. October 11, 1990.

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• I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.

  Erik Naggum

  Believe, Should Have, Brain

  Re: Checking for Errors Before Run Time (Usenet article), groups.google.com. November 21, 2001.

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• In C++, reinvention is its own reward.

  Erik Naggum

  Rewards, Reinvention

  "Wretched C++". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. April 23, 1997.

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• Let's just hope that all the world is run by Bill Gates before the Perl hackers can destroy it.

  Erik Naggum

  Running, World, Bills

  "Perl embedded in emacs". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. January 10, 1998.

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