Quote

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

Eric S. Raymond

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Eric S. Raymond
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: December 4
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Journalist
Lawyer
Programmer
Software Developer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Eric Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond
ESR
Liked
Soulless
Berkeley
Hackers
Rebels
Rebel
Empires
Corporate

More quotes by Eric S. Raymond

Image
In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Linux evolved in a completely different way. From nearly the beginning, it was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the Internet.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
The Wesnoth devs are good but not exceptionally so, and we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++). Nevertheless our productivity, in terms of goals achieved per hour of work, is quite high.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Prototype, then polish. Get it working before you optimize it
Eric S. Raymond
Image
The easiest programs to use are those which demand the least new learning from the user
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
On first blush this looks to be about money, but it is about power. Is power going to go to the information monopolies, or will it go to developers and users?.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
You cannot motivate the best people with money. Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Of course, C proved indispensible to the developers of all its alternatives. Dig down through enough implementation layers under any of the other languages surveyed here and you will find a core implemented in pure, portable C
Eric S. Raymond
Image
Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
For the first time, individual hackers could afford to have home machines comparable in power and storage capacity to the minicomputers of ten years earlier - Unix engines capable of supporting a full development environment and talking to the Internet.
Eric S. Raymond
Image
If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.
Eric S. Raymond