Philip Greenspun famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Even within traditional universities there has always been debate about whether it wouldn't be better to focus on only one course at a time.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Focus #Debate #University
Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles: Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, they can make it work. Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't. PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Thinking #Three #Mit
I don't myself believe in astrology. However, I think that's because I'm a Libra and Libras are always skeptical.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Believe #Thinking #Astrology
The book the Ziff folks sent me as an example of their art was 'Late Night VRML 2.0 with Java,' 700 pages + CD-ROM, published February 1997. I was personally acquainted with more movie stars than people who might conceivably have wanted to buy this book or any book like it.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Art #Stars #Book
Progress in computer science is made with the distribution of revolutionary software systems and the publication of revolutionary books. We don't need a fancy information system to alert us to these grand events; they will hit us in the face. Another good excuse for ignoring the literature is that, since everyone has strong beliefs about fundamentals but can't support those beliefs rationally or consistently convince non-believers, computer science is actually a religion.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Strong #Book #Support
We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Self #Worried #Unreasonable
We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Jobs #School #Want
If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Ideas #More Time #Novel
Even the lamest page can be saved by collaboration.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Collaboration #Pages
SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Thinking #Language #Programming
Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Bugs #Half #Common
When you choose a language, youre also choosing a community. The programmers youll be able to hire to work on a Java project wont be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages.
-- Philip Greenspun

#Smart #Python #Community

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