«The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked. The press must learn that misguided use of a computer is no more amazing than drunk driving of an automobile.»
— Ken Thompson, “Reflections on Trusting Trust”, 1995
«I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'»
— Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
«The IPv6 “solution” is somewhat like replacing English with
Esperanto to make spelling easier. Maybe it would, but it's not going to
happen.»
— Mike Cheponis
«The IETF requires at least two interoperable implementations before a draft can become a standard. Interoperating only with yourself is just a standards-compliant form of masturbation.»
— Mark Pilgrim
«Individuals are smart, people are stupid»
—K, Men in Black.
«Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends – commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours but are rarely credited with being driven by creative fevers. Programmers talk about software development on weekends, vacations, and over meals not because they lack imagination, but because their imagination reveals worlds that others cannot see.»
—Larry O'Brien and Bruce Eckel in Thinking in C#.
«Lack of
planning on
your part will
not constitute
an emergency
on my part»
—©2004 Brefi Group Limited, www.brefigroup.co.uk
«All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s.»
— Paul Graham, 2007
« Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.»
— Paul Graham, 2008
«When you think you know everything, they give you a bachelors; when you find that you know nothing, they give you a masters; when you find that
others also don't know anything, they give you a PhD.»
— joelthelion, 2008
«Programming is an art. Many famous composers and painters had boring “day jobs” painting kings and their fat kids. This is not what we know them for. We know them for what they did at night for free.»
— Eugueny Kontsevoy, 2008
«[T]ake the advisory seriously—we're not just a bunch of n00b alarmists, if we tell you your DNS house is on fire, and we hand you a fire hose, take it.»
— Paul Vixie, 2008
«Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system.»
— Seymour Cray
«It's hard to make money from open-source software. Some companies have tried giving away some software and then selling “support and services,” but that business plan has proven as profitable as giving away VCRs and selling the Owner's Manuals.»
— Evan Miller, 2008
«We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity'. So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since. Now I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see its earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going: 'What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work'.»
— Scott McNealy, 1997
«Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code.»
— Paul Graham
«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
«A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.»
— Robert A. Heinlein
«No financial man will ever understand business because financial people think a company makes money. A company makes shoes, and no financial man understands that. They think money is real. Shoes are real. Money is an end result.»
— Peter Drucker
«Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.»
— Edsger Dijkstra
«If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough»
— Robert Capa
«Computer programming is moments of triumph surrounded by hours of the computer telling you you're an idiot»
—David Brown(@davidbro)