Just getting something to work usually means writing reams of code fast, like a Stephen King novel, but making it maintainable and high-quality code that really expresses the ideas well, is like writing poetry. Art is taking away.
Erik NaggumLife is too long to be good at C++ – if you had spent all that time to become good at it, you would essentially have to work with it, too, to get back the costs, and that would just be some long, drawn-out torture.
Erik NaggumI 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.
Erik NaggumCounting lines is probably a good idea if you want to print it out and are short on paper, but I fail to see the purpose otherwise.
Erik NaggumVery clever implementation techniques are required to implement this insanity correctly and usefully, not to mention that code written with this feature used and abused east and west is exceptionally exciting to debug.
Erik NaggumI have long since given up dealing with people who hold idiotic opinions as if they had arrived at them through thinking about them.
Erik NaggumUnformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.
Erik NaggumC being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to memory objects into which any random function may write random values without having a clue where they point, has not been debunked as the sheer idiocy it really is.
Erik NaggumConstructing a social system that tends to those who agree with it is a piece of cake compared to constructing one that makes those who disagree with it want to obey its principles.
Erik NaggumThe aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept.
Erik NaggumWell, take it from an old hand: the only reason it would be easier to program in C is that you can't easily express complex problems in C, so you don't.
Erik NaggumGetting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants speed.
Erik NaggumLike many older fans of Free Software and Open Source, I have discovered that it is really only free in the sense that the time you spend on it is worthless.
Erik NaggumIf you are concerned about netiquette, you are either concerned about your own and follow good netiquette, or you are concerned about others and violate good netiquette by bothering people with your concern, as the only netiquette you can actually affect is your own.
Erik NaggumThe purpose of human existence is to learn and to understand as much as we can of what came before us, so we can further the sum total of human knowledge in our life.
Erik NaggumThat's why the smartest companies use Common Lisp, but lie about it so all their competitors think Lisp is slow and C++ is fast.
Erik NaggumSome people are little more than herd animals, flocking together whenever the world becomes uncomfortable … I am not one of those people. If I had a motto, it would probably be Herd thither, me hither.
Erik Naggum