Quote

Constructing a social system that tends to those who agree with it is a piece of cake compared to constructing one that makes those who disagree with it want to obey its principles.

Erik Naggum

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Erik Naggum
Age: 44 †
Born: 1965
Born: June 13
Died: 2009
Died: June 17
Computer Programmer
It Consultant
Programmer
Agree
Pieces
Constructing
Principles
Obey
System
Tends
Social
Cake
Makes
Compared
Disagree
Piece

More quotes by Erik Naggum

Image
Norway did not even have a revolution at the time the rest of Europe was busy figuring out human rights and stuff, because we were busy fighting over how to spell it.
Erik Naggum
Image
The Web provided me with a much needed realization that information cannot be fully separated from its presentation, and showed me something I knew without verbalizing explicitly, that the presentation form we choose communicates real information.
Erik Naggum
Image
it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust anybody, and in CLOS you basically trust everybody. The practical result is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS.
Erik Naggum
Image
I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it'll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.
Erik Naggum
Image
If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror.
Erik Naggum
Image
A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate appreciation, humor, software, education, inalienable rights, elegance, fact.
Erik Naggum
Image
That's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and C++ is fast.
Erik Naggum
Image
Enlightenment is probably antithetical to impatience.
Erik Naggum
Image
I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain.
Erik Naggum
Image
Ignoring for a moment the power of the American Medical Association, we still wouldn't see a huge amount of books on neurosurgery for dummies in 21 days or whatever. It's just plain inappropriate, and it's intentionally out of people's reach.
Erik Naggum
Image
What I actually admire in Perl is its ability to provide a very successful abstraction of the horrible mess that is collectively called Unix.
Erik Naggum
Image
Have you considered the option of getting the joke? If not, try it now and redeem your soul.
Erik Naggum
Image
I have long since given up dealing with people who hold idiotic opinions as if they had arrived at them through thinking about them.
Erik Naggum
Image
The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm.
Erik Naggum
Image
Gotos aren't damnable to begin with. If you aren't smart enough to distinguish what's bad about some gotos from all gotos, goto hell.
Erik Naggum
Image
C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.
Erik Naggum
Image
'Code sharing' is an economic surplus phenomenon. It works only when none of the people involved in it are in any form of need.
Erik Naggum
Image
I'm bothered by the fact that stupid people don't spontaneously combust, which they should.
Erik Naggum
Image
C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.
Erik Naggum
Image
Like many older fans of Free Software and Open Source, I have discovered that it is really only free in the sense that the time you spend on it is worthless.
Erik Naggum