Erik Naggum Quotes

"Code sharing" is an economic surplus phenomenon. It works only when none of the people involved in it are in any form of need.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I regret that this isn't fatal.

What people "want" is a function of what they learn is available. If you wish to sell something, you'd better understand that you can't give people what they want in the market today, because what they want today is what they can already get. You have to discover what they really want, and find some way to give that physical shape.

Short of coming to their senses and abolishing the whole thing, we might expect that the rules for daylight saving time will remain the same for some time to come, but there is no guarantee. (We can only be glad there is no daylight loan time, or we would face decades of too much daylight, only to be faced with a few years of total darkness to make up for it.)

It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

aestheticles: n. The little-known source of aesthetic reactions. If your whole body feels like going into a fetal position or otherwise double over from the pain of experiencing something exceptionally ugly and inelegant, such as C++, it's because your aestheticles got creamed.

I may be biased, but I tend to find a much lower tendency among female programmers to be dishonest about their skills, and thus do not say they know C++ when they are smart enough to realize that that would be a lie for all but perhaps 5 people on this planet.

Please note: if you think the above is offensive, it is of course a joke and you did not get it. If you do not find it offensive, it is of course not a joke, and you did not get it. This is not a joke. Get it?

In C++, reinvention is its own reward.

The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture has taught you. Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are more important to you than those in your past ever will be. The world is changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.

If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.

So pardon my cynical twist, but what are you doing with that 20,000×20,000 double-precision floating point matrix you say you need to invert today? If you answer "nutt'n, I jus kinda wondered what it'd be like, you know", you should be very happy that I am most likely more than 3000 miles away from you, or I would come over and slap you hard.

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.

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.

Would you buy a book proudly stating on the cover that its reader is a dummy? Or would you think "of course it's ironic"?