Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
For systems, the analogue of a face-lift is to add to the control graph an edge that creates a cycle, not just an additional node.
Alan J. Perlis
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton hotel on its peak.
Alan J. Perlis
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.
Anonymous
Like punning, programming is a play on words.
Alan J. Perlis
Linux is only free if your time has no value.
Jamie Zawinski
It is not a language's weakness but its strengths that control the gradient of its change: Alas, a language never escapes its embryonic sac.
Alan J. Perlis
Purely applicative languages are poorly applicable.
Alan J. Perlis
The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late."
Seymour Cray
[Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.
Jamie Zawinski
Computers don't introduce order anywhere as much as they expose opportunities.
Alan J. Perlis