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.
Suppose we blasted all politicians into space. Would the SETI project find even one of them?
Well, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can’t easily express complex problems in C, so you don’t.
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.
The purpose of human existence is to learn and to understand as much as we can of what came before us, so we can further the sum total of human knowledge in our life.
Languages shape the way we think, or don’t.
Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer.
Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.
We have no mom-and-pop oil rigs in Norway.
If you want to know why Lisp doesn’t win around you, find a mirror.
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.
Sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from sarcasm.
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.
The very word “exist” derives from “to step forth, to stand out”.
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.
Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook people if they try to walk around on their own. I really wonder why XML does not.
The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm.
The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I regret that this isn’t fatal.
Just getting something to work usually means writing reams of code fast, like a Stephen King novel, but making it maintainable and high-quality code that really expresses the ideas well, is like writing poetry. Art is taking away.