We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children's heads with such stuff? -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education
Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. If you compete with slaves you become a slave. -- Paul Graham and Norbert Weiner, respectively
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
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. -- Official definition of "duck typing"
Sound methodology can empower and liberate the creative mind; it cannot inflame or inspire the drudge. -- Frederick P. Brooks, No Sliver Bullet.
The best way to learn to live with our limitations is to know them. --E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out. ~Robert Collier
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. ~Vidal Sassoon