Epigrams On Programming

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.

If your computer speaks English it was probably made in Japan.

The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standardization of real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Structured Programming supports the law of the excluded muddle.

A program without a loop and a structured variable isn't worth writing.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Editing is a rewording activity.

Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.

Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semi-colons.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?

Functions delay binding: data structures induce binding. Moral: Structure data late in the programming process.

Recursion is the root of computation since it trades description for time.

Like punning, programming is a play on words.

One man's constant is another man's variable.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

Symmetry is a complexity reducing concept (co-routines include sub-routines); seek it everywhere.

A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.

In programming, everything we do is a special case of something more general - and often we know it too quickly.

Optimization hinders evolution.

Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

There will always be things we wish to say in our programs that in all known languages can only be said poorly.

What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton hotel on its peak.

Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.

Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers.