thoughts on programming

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
— Unknown
If hackers ran the world, there'd be no war — lots of accidents, maybe.
— Evan Clark
("hackers" — as in *programmers*, not "crackers", kiddo)
Just bang the rocks together.
— Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
. . . Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded . . .
— Plato, Phaedrus
Beta is only a state of mind.
— Unknown
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
— James Baldwin
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
— Hunter S. Thompson
All language is an abstraction of the real world. ... A program is an abstraction of the programmer's thoughts on how to interpret and manipulate the real world.
— Kohanski, The Philosophical Programmer, pp. 186-187
Neo-classical post-retropunks prefer explicit return statements
— Chapman
I realized today that the silver lining on the cloud of impersonal automated mass-marketed cold lifeless services, like bank ATMs, drive-thru restaurants, and internet shopping, is that they completely eliminate any prejudicial bias such as race, gender, religion, and funny hair.
— The Ult with Funny Hair
... the Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion.
— United States Judge Dalzell
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are.
— Kyle Hearn
Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix.
I do not think that this is a coincidence.
— Unknown
We spend most of our careers locating and fixing bugs. Maurice Wilkes, director of the Cambridge EDSAC project, [when the art of programming was just beginning] recalls the exact moment in June 1949 when, "hesitating at the angle of the stairs," he realized that "a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs."
— Kohanski, The Philosophical Programmer, p. 160