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Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

Eric S. Raymond

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Eric S. Raymond
Age: 66
Born: 1957
Born: December 4
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Journalist
Lawyer
Programmer
Software Developer
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Eric Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond
ESR
Software
Service
Industry
Unfounded
Operating
Manufacturing
Persistent
Largely
Delusion

More quotes by Eric S. Raymond

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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
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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
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The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
Eric S. Raymond
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The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction.
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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Programmer time is expensive conserve it in preference to machine time
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
Eric S. Raymond
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Today I am one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work, and a core Linux and open-source developer.
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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The easiest programs to use are those which demand the least new learning from the user
Eric S. Raymond
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Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages.
Eric S. Raymond
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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
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When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
Eric S. Raymond
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And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.
Eric S. Raymond
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Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
Eric S. Raymond