Quotes by Erik Naggum

Erik Naggum

A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.

Engineering

Needs

People

All experience has taught us that solving a complex problem uncovers hidden assumptions and ever more knowledge, trade-offs that we didn’t anticipate but which can make the difference between meeting a deadline and going into research mode for a year, etc.

Differences

Taught Us

Years

C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

Design

Language

Simple

Counting lines is probably a good idea if you want to print it out and are short on paper, but I fail to see the purpose otherwise.

Ideas

Paper

Purpose

Elegance is necessarily unnatural, only achieveable at great expense. If you just do something, it won’t be elegant, but if you do it and then see what might be more elegant, and do it again, you might, after an unknown number of iterations, get something that is very elegant.

Elegance

Might

Numbers

Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants speed.

Errors

Etc

Thinking

Historically, labor unions arose when people had gotten a taste of a different lifestyle and were willing to pay a lot more for their basic livelihood and had gotten into a fix they couldn’t get out of – because they had accepted the unacceptable to begin with. Accepting something you have to form a labor union to fight after the fact only tells me that people were acting against their own best (or even good) interests for a long time. I don’t see any rational, coherent explanation for this sort of behavior in humans, but it’s all over the place.

Fighting

Long

People

I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it’ll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.

Firsts

Forget

Gross

I have actually programmed a fair bit in Perl, like I have C++ code published with my name on it. Other things I have tried and have no intention to do again if I can at all avoid it include smoking, getting drunk enough to puke and waste the whole next day with hang-over, breaking a leg in a violent car crash, getting mugged in New York City, or travel with Aeroflot.

Cities

Names

New York

I have argued that a religion or a philosophy cannot speak about facts of the world – if it does, it is now or will eventually be wrong – but it can and should speak about the relevance and ranking of facts and observations.

Doe

Philosophy

World

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Admire

Animal

Answers

Believe

Book

Bother

Children

Cities

Community

Concern

Cost

Degrees

Design

Dies

Differences

Doe

Done

Dwarves

Elegance

Engineering

Errors

Etc

Evil

Existence

Facts

Fans

Fighting

Firsts

Forget

Giving

Gross

Hey

Humans

Ideas

Important

Language

Laziness

Life Is

Life Is Hard

Long

Looks

Lying

Microsoft

Might

Mind

Mom

Names

Needs

New York

Nice

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Erik Naggum

Erik Naggum

A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.

All experience has taught us that solving a complex problem uncovers hidden assumptions and ever more knowledge, trade-offs that we didn’t anticipate but which can make the difference between meeting a deadline and going into research mode for a year, etc.

C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, it is not any cleaner than the assembly-language design it is based on.

Counting lines is probably a good idea if you want to print it out and are short on paper, but I fail to see the purpose otherwise.

Elegance is necessarily unnatural, only achieveable at great expense. If you just do something, it won’t be elegant, but if you do it and then see what might be more elegant, and do it again, you might, after an unknown number of iterations, get something that is very elegant.

Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants speed.

I guess there are some things that are so gross you just have to forget, or it’ll destroy something within you. Perl is the first such thing I have known.

I have argued that a religion or a philosophy cannot speak about facts of the world – if it does, it is now or will eventually be wrong – but it can and should speak about the relevance and ranking of facts and observations.

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Topics by Erik Naggum

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The Future Blueprint

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The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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