I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran.

I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran.

I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.