We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. read more

We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed...

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating read more

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.

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.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics. - Essays, 1625.

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics. - Essays, 1625.

A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. read more

A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice. How low can you stoop?

By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But read more

By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the read more

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.