I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra

The only problems we can really solve in a satisfactory manner are those that finally admit a nicely factored solution. -- E. W. Dijkstra, The humble programmer

It’s a problem if the design doesn’t let you add features at a later date. If you have to redo a program, the hours you spend can cause you to lose your competitive edge. A flexible program demonstrates the difference between a good designer and someone who is just getting a piece of code out. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

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)

In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. -- Albert Einstein

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

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. ~Jane Smiley