David Gelernter Quotes

Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't.

While we bemoan the decline of literacy, computers discount words in favor of pictures and pictures in favor of video. While we fret about the decreasing cogency of public debate, computers dismiss linear argument and promote fast, shallow romps across the information landscape. While we worry about basic skills, we allow into the classroom software that will do a student's arithmetic or correct his spelling.

The "paperless office" is a bad idea because paper is one of the most useful and valuable media ever invented. "On paper" is a good place for information you want to use; a bad place for information you want to store.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. ... The geniuses of the computer field, on the the other hand, are the people with the keenest aesthetic senses, the ones who are capable of creating beauty. Beauty is decisive at every level: the most important interfaces, the most important programming languages, the winning algorithms are the beautiful ones.

One: Make Congress and the White House obey the same Obamacare rules you do. Two: Obama let business off for a year; we want workers to be let off for a year too. That’s the GOP plan. What part don’t you like?

If this is the information age, what are we so well-informed about?

Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

The best computer scientists are...technologists who crave beauty.

Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs.

For years, computer scientists were treating operating systems design as sort of an open-reserch issue, when the field's direction had been decided by commercial operations. Computer science has become completely cut off from reality.

Computers make people stupid.

if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

We can't share the earth with pure evil anymore than we can share the earth with smallpox.

The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on.

Surprise is the beginning of wisdom.

The future was and remains the quintessential American art form. Other nations sit back and let their futures happen; we construct ours. We can let the future happen, or take the trouble to imagine it. We can imagine it dark or bright - and in the long run, that's how it will be.