There Is Very Little Point In Trying

Much Of The Excitement We Get Out Of Our Work Is That We Don't Really Know What We Are Doing.

Programming Is One Of The Most Difficult Branches Of Applied Mathematics; The Poorer Mathematicians Had Better Remain Pure Mathematicians.

I Mean, If 10 Years From Now, When You Are Doing Something Quick And Dirty, You Suddenly Visualize That I Am Looking Over Your Shoulders And Say To Yourself "dijkstra Would Not Have Liked This," Well, That Would Be Enough Immortality For Me.

In This Respect A Program Is Like A Poem: You Cannot Write A Poem Without Writing It. Yet People Talk About Programming As If It Were A Production Process And Measure "programmer Productivity" In Terms Of "number Of Lines Of Code Produced". In So Doing They Book That Number On The Wrong Side Of The Ledger: We Should Always Refer To "the Number Of Lines Of Code Spent".

Probably I Am Very Naive, But I Also Think I Prefer To Remain So, At Least For The Time Being And Perhaps For The Rest Of My Life.