I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That's why programming---or buying software---on the basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess.
-- Ted Nelson
-- Ted Nelson
Related:
- I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is
magical and not to be lightly tinkered with.
The difference between a great design and a lousy one... - Ada n.
A Pascal-descended language that has been made
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon.
Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, ... - Ada:: n. A {{Pascal}}-descended language that has been made
mandatory for Department of Defense software projects by the
Pentagon.
Hackers are nearly unanimous in observing that, ... - TeX /tekh/ n.
An extremely powerful macro-based text formatter written by
Donald E.
Knuth, very popular in the computer-science community... - If you want X, you know where to find it.
There is a legend
that Dennis Ritchie,
inventor of C, once responded to demands for features... - If you want X, you know where to find it.: There is a legend that
Dennis Ritchie,
inventor of {C}, once responded to demands for features... - connector conspiracy n.
[probably came into prominence with
the appearance of the KL-10 (one model of the PDP-10),
none of whose connectors matched anything else]... - language lawyer n.
A person, usually an experienced or
senior software engineer,
who is intimately familiar with many or most of... - language lawyer: n. A person, usually an experienced or senior
software engineer,
who is intimately familiar with many or most of ...
From the same category:
- Software is Too Important to be Left to Programmers,
by Meilir Page-Jones. "If you think good architecture... - We reject kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.
Dave Clark... - You must be the change
You wish to see in the
world --... - when the cart stops
do you whip the cart
or whip
the ox... - There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late"
-
Karin...
