John Backus famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

They don't like thinking in medical school. They memorize - that's all they want you to do. You must not think.
-- John Backus

#School #Thinking #Want
You need the willingness to fail all the time.
-- John Backus

#Needs #Failing #Willingness
You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they donâ€™t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.
-- John Backus

#Ideas #Doe #Needs
Much of my work has come from being lazy.
-- John Backus

#Lazy #Laziness
I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination.
-- John Backus

#Learning #Imagination #Creative
Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language.
-- John Backus

#Law #Understanding #Ordinary
Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.
-- John Backus

#Writing #Lazy #Computer

I've been singing all my life. I've always wanted this. I sang in church, in school plays, and my parents gave me vocal lessons. My parents always said this was destined for me.
I was a very awkward high schooler, especially in early high school. I had the middle part with a swoop, all that. It was the late â€™90s!
Behind the parents stands the school, and behind the teacher the home.
Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
Think it over, think it under.
Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...
I want the love that cannot help but love; Loving, like God, for very sake of love.
You can have whatever you want if you believe in yourself and keep your feet firmly planted in the ground.
One can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it.
People should pay more attention. Everyone wants attention, but no one wants to give attention.

John Backus famous quotes

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