The problem with using C++ ... is that there's already a strong tendency in the language to require you to know everything before you can do anything.

Symmetry is overrated. Overrated is symmetry.

Computer programming is really a lot like writing a recipe. If you've read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is, it's got some things up at the top that are your ingredients, and below that, the directions for how to deal with those ingredients.

Don't wear rollerskates to a tug-of-war.

Even the White House has a press agent.

The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.

A lazy person will try to always find some way to do something; they'll always be looking for ways of doing something faster, more efficiently, and if you really want to control the world, that's a really sort of hubristic notion - excessive pride, the thing that Zeus zaps you for having.