You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right. -- Richard Feynman
While I’ve always appreciated beautiful code, I share Jonathan’s concern about studying it too much. I think studying beauty in music and painting has led us to modern classical music and painting that the majority of us just don’t get. Beauty can be seen when it emerges, but isn’t something to strive for in isolation of a larger context. In the software world, the larger context would be the utility of the software to the end user. -- [A comment on a blog]
Abstraction is a form of data compression: absolutely necessary, because human short-term memory is so small, but the critically important aspect of abstraction is the algorithm that gets you from the name back to the "uncompressed" details. -- Bruce Wilder (blog post comment)
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. -- Alfred North Whitehead (Introduction to Mathematics)
Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning. -- Rich Cook
The Work Begins Anew, The Hope Rises Again, And The Dream Lives On. -- Ted Kennedy
The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself--the invisible battles inside all of us--that's where it's at. –Jesse Owens
I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. ~Anonymous