Programmer Quotes

Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self.

The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination [putting off important things to do unimportant things], because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.

It seems to be really happening. I mean, my parents are using Linux. The setup is still the tricky point, but I set the machine up last time I was in France and they've been actually catching on and start to use it. They like OpenOffice, they like having GAIM and Firefox, they're really happy with that. My brother-in-law, who's really a Windows guy, just decided to install Linux because he was tired of his machine being slow and spyware and everything. He really didn't need that much help from me to get his stuff running, doing mail and chatting and all that basic web stuff, so I guess it's really picking up.

Timothee Besset

Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my 'gold standard', and it has been quite a while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand new extensions work as documented the first time I try them. When I have a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault. With anyone else's drivers, I assume it is their fault.

John D. Carmack

One thing about school - I always had this attitude that I was in school to learn, and attempted to do whatever was involved in that process, while school had this attitude that I was there to earn grades, which I couldn't care less about. Unsurprisingly, my grades weren't very good.

Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works.

Most programming languages contain good parts and bad parts. I discovered that I could be better programmer by using only the good parts and avoiding the bad parts.

Douglas Crockford

When people work code they can often see things I set out to do that they wouldn't notice otherwise. And there are no obligations to say, "Ward you're brilliant," but sometimes they say, "Ward you're brilliant." And that strokes my ego. Pride of ownership? You bet.

Ward Cunningham

A few months ago I was visiting my mother, and she said that as a child I had always wanted to learn everything, and that it took me a long time to realize that you couldn't learn everything. I got really angry, and I shouted "I'm not done yet!"

Mark Jason Dominus

The difference between a hacker and consumer is a consumer says, "I wish it would work this way." A hacker says, "I've got a screwdriver and a few minutes."

For there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold, imposed by force, resisted or escaped.

People rag on western medicine a lot for its disregard of indirect causalities and holism, for its antisceptic deconstructivism, for its blindness to things like the union of mind and body, and for its proclivity for post-facto treatment... But these criticisms notwithstanding, modern medicine is the accumulation of years and years of human effort to taxonomically observe, understand and explain an enormous set of conditions within a massively complex, underspecified system. To me, this is impressive. Also, they use cool phrases like "the radiolucent lungs" and "ligamentous laxity."

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

If I'm the only one pushing Linux gaming, we have a serious problem. I'm happy for the contributions I've made, but I would be happier to know that Linux gaming can continue if I get hit by a bus. There are others out there doing what I do. You should interview them too.

Yes, I noted that there were hardly any or no women in certain high level positions. But as time passed, I, along with others, did attain, and with pride for managing to do so, a series of positions in the ladder.

Henriette Avram

I personally object to episodic games where you play one screen of Space Invaders and one screen of Breakout and one screen of Galaxians and one screen of this and one of that. To me, that's not a game. It's just taking five bad games, putting them together, and calling them one good game. I'm philosophically against that.

PHP is about as exciting as your toothbrush. You use it every day, it does the job, it is a simple tool, so what? Who would want to read about toothbrushes?

Gambas does not try to be compatible with Visual Basic, and will never be. I'm convinced that its syntax and internals are far better than the one's of its proprietary cousin.

Benoît Minisini

Don't forget that Linux became only possible because 20 years of OS research was carefully studied, analyzed, discussed and thrown away.

I like the observation that Forth is an amplifier: a good programmer can write a great program; a bad programmer a terrible one. I feel no need to cater to bad programmers.

Charles H. Moore

The first 3 years the focus would be entirely on [...] building a rock solid infrastructure.

If you are concerned about netiquette, you are either concerned about your own and follow good netiquette, or you are concerned about others and violate good netiquette by bothering people with your "concern", as the only netiquette you can actually affect is your own.

Good luck distinguishing which sign is the REAL sign when my entire front lawn is covered with thousands of little green signs - each with a different number! Ahahahah! I'll be EVERY address in the whole freakin' township! And what are you gonna do about it? Hopefully, NOTHING!

Healthcare is one of the areas where open data will potentially take off soonest and have the biggest impact.

Praising companies for providing APIs to get your own data out is like praising auto companies for not filling your airbags with gravel.