Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and read more

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in read more

FORTRAN --'the infantile disorder'--, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
PL/I --'the fatal disease'-- belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

What we know is not much; what we do not know is immense.

What we know is not much; what we do not know is immense.

The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the read more

The coming of the printing press must have seemed as if it would turn the world upside down in the way it spread and, above all, democratized knowledge. Provide you could pay and read, what was on the shelves in the new bookshops was yours for the taking. The speed with which printing presses and their operators fanned out across Europe is extraordinary. From the single Mainz press of 1457, it took only twenty-three years to establish presses in 110 towns: 50 in Ita!0 in Germany, 9 in France, 8 in Spain, 8 in Holland, 4 in England, and so on.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. read more

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

INNOVATION is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.

INNOVATION is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no read more

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.