Increasingly, people seem to interpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling – the incomprehensible should cause suspicion, not admiration. Possibly this results from the mistaken belief that using a mysterious device confers extra power on the user. - Niklaus Wirth
Amateurs vs professionals
The last characteristic which we note in the history of cryptography is the division between amateur and professional cryptographers. Skill in production cryptanalysis has always been heavily on the side of the professionals, but innovation, particularly in the design of new types of cryptographic systems, has come primarily from the amateurs. - Diffie & Helman's "New Directions in Cryptography" paper
Design patterns
Design patterns are spoonfeed material for brainless programmers incapable of independent thought, who will be resolved to producing code as mediocre as the design patterns they use to create it. - Christer Ericson
Copying
Good artist copy, great artists steal. - Picasso
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. - Igor Stravinsky
It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to. - Jean Luc-Godard
Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better. - Stanley Kubrick
Intelligence vs wisdom vs education
It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think. - Thomas Sowell
The smarter someone is, the dumber beliefs they can rationalise. - a HN user
Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything. - C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Tyranny
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons then under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - C.S. Lewis
From the UGH Book
“Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don’t think that is a coincidence.”
"C++ Is to C as Lung Cancer Is to Lung"
"Creating a programming language is like drawing a horse." - Roberto Ierusalimschy
Complex vs complicated
Increasingly, people seem to interpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling – the incomprehensible should cause suspicion, not admiration. Possibly this results from the mistaken belief that using a mysterious device confers extra power on the user. - Niklaus Wirth
Amateurs vs professionals
The last characteristic which we note in the history of cryptography is the division between amateur and professional cryptographers. Skill in production cryptanalysis has always been heavily on the side of the professionals, but innovation, particularly in the design of new types of cryptographic systems, has come primarily from the amateurs. - Diffie & Helman's "New Directions in Cryptography" paper
Design patterns
Design patterns are spoonfeed material for brainless programmers incapable of independent thought, who will be resolved to producing code as mediocre as the design patterns they use to create it. - Christer Ericson
Copying
Good artist copy, great artists steal. - Picasso
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. - Igor Stravinsky
It's not where you take things from, it's where you take them to. - Jean Luc-Godard
Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better. - Stanley Kubrick
Intelligence vs wisdom vs education
It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think. - Thomas Sowell
The smarter someone is, the dumber beliefs they can rationalise. - a HN user
Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything. - C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Tyranny
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons then under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - C.S. Lewis
From the UGH Book
“Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don’t think that is a coincidence.”
"C++ Is to C as Lung Cancer Is to Lung"
"Creating a programming language is like drawing a horse." - Roberto Ierusalimschy