I was talking recently to a friend who teaches at MIT. His field is hot now and every year he is inundated by applications from would-be graduate students. "A lot of them seem smart," he said. "What I can't tell is whether they have any kind of taste." -- Paul Graham
C and Lisp stand at opposite ends of the spectrum; they're each great at what the other one sucks at. -- Steve Yegge, Tour de Babel.
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. -- Thomas Jefferson
We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. -- Rush (Freewill)
We control complexity by building abstractions that hide details when appropriate. We control complexity by establishing conventional interfaces that enable us to construct systems by combining standard, well-understood pieces in a ``mix and match'' way. We control complexity by establishing new languages for describing a design, each of which emphasizes particular aspects of the design and deemphasizes others. -- Alan J. Perlis
No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.~ Anonymous
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly. ~Proverb
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend it daily. ~Zig Ziglar
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe