Eric S. Raymond Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• 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

  Writing, Learning, Bridges

  "Why Python?". www.linuxjournal.com. Apr 30, 2000.

• When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Sugar, Language, Programming

  Eric S. Raymond (2001). “The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary”, p.46, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

• We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Fun, People, Mad

  "Guest Editorial: World Domination". www.linuxjournal.com. January 1, 2000.

• 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

  Powerful, Thinking, Years

• 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

  Alternatives, Layers, Language

  Eric S. Raymond (2003). “The Art of UNIX Programming”, p.326, Addison-Wesley Professional

• 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

  Language, Implementation

  "What a Modern Collaboration Toolkit Looks Like". Emacs-devel thread, lists.gnu.org. December 30, 2007.

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