Eric S. Raymond Quotes

Why the hell hasn't wxPython become the standard GUI for Python yet?

Does Facebook act as though I own my online life, or as though it does? Concretely: Can I control what data it shares with other users, with advertisers, and with business partners?

People are happiest when they're the most productive. People enjoy tasks, especially creative tasks, when the tasks are in the optimal-challenge zone: not too hard and not too easy. To some extent, that has always been true. But it becomes even more true as work becomes more about brains and creativity.

Money is just a way to keep score. The best people in any field are motivated by passion. That becomes more true the higher the skill level gets.

When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible - and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!

Equally, the Internet interprets attempts at proprietary control as threats and mobilizes to defeat them.

When the superior programmer refrains from coding, his force is felt for a thousand miles.

The easiest programs to use are those which demand the least new learning from the user

Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom.

On first blush this looks to be about money, but it is about power. Is power going to go to the information monopolies, or will it go to developers and users?.

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.

In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color.

Python language is one example. As we noted above, it is also heavily used for mathematical and scientific papers, and will probably dominate that niche for some years yet. 18.3.3

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

Every good work of software starts by scratching a developers personal itch.

A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.

Lisp was far more powerful and flexible than any other language of its day; in fact, it is still a better design than most languages of today, twenty-five years later. Lisp freed ITS's hackers to think in unusual and creative ways. It was a major factor in their successes, and remains one of hackerdom's favorite languages.

If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.

The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1.

When are programmers happy? They're happy when they're not underutilized - when they're not bored - and also when they're not overburdened with inappropriate specifications or meaningless bureaucracies. In other words, programmers are happiest when they're working efficiently. This is a general preference in creative work.

Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry

As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of my choosing which are built for my needs?

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me?

To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.

Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.

Today I am one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work, and a core Linux and open-source developer.

Programmer time is expensive; conserve it in preference to machine time

If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you.

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

Top-down tends to be good practice when three preconditions are true: (a) you can specify in advance precisely what the program is to do, (b) the specification is unlikely to change significantly during implementation, and (c) you have a lot of freedom in choosing, at a low level, how the program is to get that job done.

Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.

The ARPAnet was the first transcontinental, high-speed computer network.

And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I've got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome.

Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.

I believe, but cannot prove, that global "AIDS" is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons, and that the identification of HIV as the sole pathogen is likely to go down as one of the most colossal blunders in the history of medicine.

Grovelling is not a substitute for doing your homework.

The central problem of C and C++ is that they require programmers to do their own memory management

It is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature

In early 1993, a hostile observer might have had grounds for thinking that the Unix story was almost played out, and with it the fortunes of the hacker tribe.

And we're weighed down by a crappy implementation language (C++).

The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.

With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.

Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.

The iPhone brand is in worse shape than I thought was even possible. And the implications of that are huge ... The iPhone is in deep trouble.

When I hear the words social responsibility, I want to reach for my gun.

Free markets select for winning solutions.

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.

There is a flip side to this. In the Unix world, libraries which are delivered as libraries should come with exerciser programs.