Hints on programming-language design (Primary source)
In this paper, Tony Hoare outlines foundational principles for designing programming languages, emphasizing that readability and simplicity are more valuable than clever features or machine optimization.
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“What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline? My answer to these questions is simple—it is the art of programming a computer.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“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.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“In all branches of commerce and industry, history shows dramatic reduction in the error rates when their cost is brought back from the customer to the perpetrator.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“For what are we born if not to aid one another?”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“A problem thoroughly understood is half solved.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source