It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical. |
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. |
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. |
LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing. |
One man's constant is another man's variable. |
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it. |
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. |
Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere. |
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. |
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman. |
The computing field is always in need of new cliches. |
The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information. |
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. |
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses. |
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. |