Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.

If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas.

First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.