Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One of the toughest things about life is making choices. I had a hard time saying 'no' to a bunch of other excellent possibilities.
I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
Always remember, however, that there’s usually a simpler and better way to do something than the first way that pops into your head.
I get very excited when we discover a way of making neural networks better - and when that's closely related to how the brain works.
While games are fun to play, children should grow up not just being the consumers of technology but also the creators of technology.
We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.
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.
Today scientists, technologists, businessmen, engineers don't have any personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
Any new technology, if it's used by evil people, bad things can happen. But that's more a question of the politics of the technology.
The recycling of resource by the aggregate behavior of a diverse array of agents is much more than the sum of the individual actions.
I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.
The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's simply larger than it needs to be. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission
The possible solutions to a given problem emerge as the leaves of a tree, each node representing a point of deliberation and decision.
When people have expectations, you're going to make a lot of them upset - when in fact I'm not trying to represent anybody but myself.
The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
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.
Writing a portable OS is not much harder than a nonportable one, and all systems should be written with portability in mind these days.
The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.
The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards.
E-mail also changed things in that you don't have to write a full document to discuss something. You can just send an e-mail to a list.
Once scientists and scholars invest parts of their career in support of a paradigm, it becomes a sort of a self-betrayal to abandon it.
Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.
We'll fund a project even if I'm skeptical because I'd rather be proven wrong by somebody on the inside than by somebody on the outside.
Design bugs are often subtle and occur by evolution with early assumptions being forgotten as new features or uses are added to systems.
People in general are not interested in paying extra for increased safety. At the beginning seat belts cost $200 and nobody bought them.
I believe good software is written by small teams of two, three, or four people interacting with each other at a very high, dense level.
Small businesses have made the call that to stay alive, health care isn't something they can provide. I think it's a tragic calculation.
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality.
'Balance' is a soft word. It implies calm, something almost yogic, but that's not it at all. The process is always chaotic and turbulent.
The NSA is already bugging everything that everybody does. Each time there's a new revelation from Snowden, you realise the extent of it.
nonlinear interactions almost always make the behavior of the aggregate more complicated than would be predicted by summing or averaging.
It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.
Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.
Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning.
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
With current technology it is possible to put four floppy disk drives in a personal computer. It is just that doing so would be pointless.
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
Because one has to be an optimist to begin an ambitious project, it is not surprising that underestimation of completion time is the norm.
Ask Bill [Gates] why the string in [MS-DOS] function 9 is terminated by a dollar sign. Ask him, because he can't answer. Only I know that.
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.
In the long run, curiosity-driven research just works better... Real breakthroughs come from people focusing on what they're excited about.
I'd like to get to a state where people think that if you've Googled something, you've researched it, and otherwise haven't, and that's it.
As more and more people awaken to the threats against our basic rights online, we must start a debate - everywhere - about the web we want.
All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.
I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
When I see a film, I'll remember that there was a time when it wasn't working, and there was some pain and angst in order to get it to work.
In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.