It's easy to win forgiveness for being wrong; being right is what gets you into real trouble.

Anybody who comes to you and says he has a perfect language is either naive or a salesman.

This evolution may compromise Java's claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the effort will make Java a better language than it is today.

An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

I like doing research that has an impact. If I went to a company to make what they call 'real money,' I'd be just trying to make a system work as fast as possible to meet the product and serice deadlines.

There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.