“In all spheres of human intellectual and practical activity, from carpentry to golf, from sculpture to space travel, the true craftsman is the one who thoroughly understands his tools.”
Tony Hoare
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.
More about “Hints on programming-language design” →
“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“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“Here is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors.”
— Tony Hoare Primary source“A problem thoroughly understood is half solved.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“All our science lacks a human side.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.”
— Ernest Hemingway Primary source