Technology Quotes

Competition is always a fantastic thing, and the computer industry is intensely competitive. Whether it's Google or Apple or free software, we've got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding 'aol.com' to people's Usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace prize.

Good programmers use their brains, but good guidelines save us having to think out every case.

Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are.

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who's going to build.

Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.

Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.

In the long run every program becomes rococo - then rubble.

Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.

You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.

Computation has made the tree flower.

I am sometimes something of a lazy person, so when I end up spending a lot of time using something myself — as I did with Google in the earliest of days, I knew it was a big deal.

Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

Software is under a constant tension. Being symbolic it is arbitrarily perfectible; but also it is arbitrarily changeable.

Think

Beware of computer programmers that carry screwdrivers.

The best accelerator available for a Mac is one that causes it to go at 9.81 m/s2.

Encryption...is a powerful defensive weapon for free people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who is running the government... It's hard to think of a more powerful, less dangerous tool for liberty.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

Often it is the means that justify the ends: Goals advance technique and technique survives even when goal structures crumble.