A CS professor once explained recursion as follows: A child couldn't sleep, so her mother told her a story about a little frog, who couldn't sleep, so the frog's mother told her a story about a little bear, who couldn't sleep, so the bear's mother told her a story about a little weasel... who fell asleep. ...and the little bear fell asleep; ...and the little frog fell asleep; ...and the child fell asleep. -- everything2.com
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. -- Mark Twain
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)
And if you go too far up, abstraction-wise, you run out of oxygen. Sometimes smart thinkers just don't know when to stop, and they create these absurd, all-encompassing, high-level pictures of the universe that are all good and fine, but don't actually mean anything at all. -- Joel Spolsky
So - what are the most important problems in software engineering? I’d answer “dealing with complexity”. -- Mark Chu-Carroll
A witty saying proves nothing -- Voltaire
Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out. ~John Wooden
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. ~Proverb
Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne