Eric S. Raymond Quotes

48 Sourced Quotes

The case for dumping iPhone, or at least threatening to do so in order to renegotiate Apple's subsidy requirement away, seems pretty open and shut. Apple has things all its own way right now — skimming the lion's share of the profits off the carriers' business without having to shoulder their risks. But this is an unstable situation, because the carriers' investors won't tolerate it indefinitely. What happens when they revolt?

Eric S. Raymond
Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer

Eric S. Raymond
Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

Eric S. Raymond
In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.

Eric S. Raymond
An Apple employee copied Sony's design, circulated it to his bosses, and testified to these facts in court. From now on, when anyone heaps phrase on Apple's design excellence and superlative innovation, just point and laugh. Some of us have been saying for years that what Apple is really good at is ripping off other peoples' ideas and stealing the credit for them with slick marketing. This, right here, is the proof.

Eric S. Raymond
The iPad is the ultimate Steve Jobs device – so hypnotic that not only do people buy one without knowing what it's good for, they keep feeling like they ought to use it even when they have better alternatives for everything it does. It's a triumph of style over substance, cool over utility, form over actual function.

Eric S. Raymond
For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Internet.

Eric S. Raymond
Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

Eric S. Raymond
And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.

Eric S. Raymond
We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger — especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.

Eric S. Raymond
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

Eric S. Raymond
Android continues to stomp its competition flat. Even the post-Jobs Apple can't stem the tide; it's pretty close to the 10% niche market share I predicted back in 2009 already, with no sign that trend will or can be reversed.

Eric S. Raymond
The iPhone brand is in worse shape than I thought was even possible. And the implications of that are huge. … The iPhone is in deep trouble.

Eric S. Raymond
A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately see what is going on. It is simple when what is going on is uncomplicated enough for a human brain to reason about all the potential cases without strain

Eric S. Raymond
Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it

Eric S. Raymond
Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

Eric S. Raymond
A critical factor in its success was that the X developers were willing to give the sources away for free in accordance with the hacker ethic, and able to distribute them over the Internet.

Eric S. Raymond
Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time

Eric S. Raymond