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Contrary to the foolish notion that syntax is immaterial, people optimize the way they express themselves, and so express themselves differently with different syntaxes.

Erik Naggum

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Erik Naggum
Age: 44 †
Born: 1965
Born: June 13
Died: 2009
Died: June 17
Computer Programmer
It Consultant
Programmer
Express
Contrary
Notion
Different
Optimize
Way
Immaterial
People
Syntax
Differently
Foolish

More quotes by Erik Naggum

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We have no mom-and-pop oil rigs in Norway.
Erik Naggum
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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
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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
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A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate appreciation, humor, software, education, inalienable rights, elegance, fact.
Erik Naggum
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Some people are little more than herd animals, flocking together whenever the world becomes uncomfortable … I am not one of those people. If I had a motto, it would probably be Herd thither, me hither.
Erik Naggum
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I'm bothered by the fact that stupid people don't spontaneously combust, which they should.
Erik Naggum
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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
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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
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Enlightenment is probably antithetical to impatience.
Erik Naggum
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'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
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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
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If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror.
Erik Naggum
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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
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The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm.
Erik Naggum
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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
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Once we were Programmers. Maybe our last best hope is a movie.
Erik Naggum
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Just getting something to work usually means writing reams of code fast, like a Stephen King novel, but making it maintainable and high-quality code that really expresses the ideas well, is like writing poetry. Art is taking away.
Erik Naggum
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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
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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
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The purpose of human existence is to learn and to understand as much as we can of what came before us, so we can further the sum total of human knowledge in our life.
Erik Naggum