Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. -- Alan J. Perlis (Epigrams in programmi ng)

When you’ve got the code all ripped apart, it’s like a car that’s all disassembled. You’ve got all the parts tying all over your garage and you have to replace the broken part or the car will never run. It’s not fun until the code gets back to the baseline again. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

Having large case statements in an object-oriented language is a sure sign your design is flawed. -- [Fixing architecture flaws in Rails' ORM]

Resume writing is just like dating, or applying for a bank loan, in that nobody wants you if you're desperate. -- Steve Yegge.

Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev

J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence. -- Anatole France

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. ~Herman Melville

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great. ~John D. Rockefeller

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers