Eric S. Raymond Short Quotes

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Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it

Eric S. Raymond
If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.

Eric S. Raymond
... and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++).

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

Eric S. Raymond
The ARPAnet was the first transcontinental, high-speed computer network.

Eric S. Raymond
When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun.

Eric S. Raymond
A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.

Eric S. Raymond
Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).

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

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

Eric S. Raymond
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.

Eric S. Raymond
The workstation-class machines built by Sun and others opened up new worlds for hackers.

Eric S. Raymond
When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.

Eric S. Raymond
Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.

Eric S. Raymond
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

Eric S. Raymond
Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.

Eric S. Raymond
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.

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

Eric S. Raymond
The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.

Eric S. Raymond
If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

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
In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

Eric S. Raymond
If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them.

Eric S. Raymond
When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible - and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!

Eric S. Raymond