Something Confusing about "Hard": It's tempting to think that if it's hard, then it's valuable. Most valuable things are hard. Most hard things are completely useless -- (picture of someone smashing their head through concrete blocks kung-fu style). Hard DOES NOT EQUATE TO BEING valuable. Remember Friendster back in the day? You'd sign in, invite friends, have 25 friends, go to their profile, and then it'd show how you were connected to each one. That's an impressive [some geeky CS jargon] Cone traversal of a tree - 100 million string comparisons per page -- it won't scale. Used to take a minute per page to load, and Friendster died a painful death. MySpace -- not interested in solving problems They use the shortcut of "Miss Fitzpatrick is in your extended network" (i.e. even when you're not even signed up for MySpace) They didn't solve the hard problem. But they make the more relevant assumption that you want to be connected to hot women. [LOL] Shows Alexa graph showing that in early 2005 Myspace took off, and quickly bypassed Friendster and never looked back. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection. -- Butler Lampson
I’d rather write programs to write programs than write programs. -- Richard Sites
When your enemy is making a very serious mistake, don't be impolite and disturb him. -- Napoleon Bonaparte (allegedly)
It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people. -- Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)
As builders and creators finding the perfect solution should not be our main goal. We should find the perfect problem. -- Isaac (blog comment)
Your problem isn’t the problem. Your reaction is the problem. ~Anonymous
Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to doDon’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. ~Jim Rohn
Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. ~Theodore N. Vail
Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt