Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
Alan Perlis
A year spent in artificial intelligence
is enough to make one believe in God.
Raymond Chandler
A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error
messages.
Anonymous
We can walk our road together if our goals are the same.
We can run alone and free if we persue a different aim.
Install Notes, NetBSD 0.8, 1993
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is
by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We
cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a
million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire
works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet,
we know this is not true.
Robert Wilensky, ILP 1996
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Jeremy S. Anderson
That's our advantage at Microsoft;
we set the standards and we can change them.
Karen Hargrove of Microsoft, quoted
in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial
Microsoft is known generally for imitation rather than
innovation. When Microsoft does something new, its purpose is
strategic -- not to improve computing for the users, but to close off
future alternatives for them.
RMS, in response to criticism of the GPL by Jim Allchin,
Group VP of Operating-Systems Develoment at Microsoft
Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according everybody
is the "most reliable Windows ever." To me, this is like saying that
asparagus is "the most articulate vegetable ever."
Dave Berry
In our view, everybody is a potential partner -- until they shoot at us.
AOL CEO Steve Case
Information Week 11 Mar 96 p10
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
Computer software must not only work, it must also appear to work.
Carl Hewitt
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso
Instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead
of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the
program, should the value of pi change.
FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
The lack of these features merely serves to make systems
programming for the the Transputer an interesting exercise.
The Helios Operating System, Prentice-Hall, 1989
Welcome to the Adventure shell!
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike> fight shell
The shell hits! -more- you lose a file
Dave Morrison
Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
Steve Wozniak
We can lick gravity,
but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
Werner Von Braun
/*
* we mean to emit floating-point code. figure out what we want to do,
* figure out who we are, and do the right thing.
*/
comment from the portable C-compiler
Because vitually everyone was against us ...
I knew we were on the right track.
Dr. Marshall T. Rose
A hacker is any person who derives joy from discovering ways
to circumvent limitations.
Bob Bickford, Oct. 1986
God is real, unless cast to an integer.
Of course, unless one has a theory, one
cannot expect much help from a computer
(unless it has a theory)....
Marvin Minsky
Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
In God we trust -- all others must submit an X.509 certificate.
Charles Forsythe
To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
To the plumber, any liquid in the glass is potential income.
(With thanks to John Pettitt and Ed O'Connell)
Truth decays into beauty, while beauty soon becomes merely charm. Charm
ends up as strangeness, and even that doesn't last, but up and down are
forever.
The Laws of Physics
