William Blair
Software Engineer
If you have somehow stumbled across this, you will likely find little of interest here. Why does it even exist? It is mainly because I finally succumbed to repeated requests of the form “you should post that” (meaning online). What you will find here, then, will be text, quotes, and website links that others feel worthy of recording and wider dissemination, or simply a random aide–mémoire for myself. It is likely there will never be any substantive organization of this material. It will simply be what is now called a “blog.”
“What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months.”
— Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr.
“All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: “This time it will surely run,” or “I just found the last bug.”
— Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”
“Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.”
— Fredrick P. Brooks, Jr.
“A lot of dev work is taking things from one list and putting it on another.”
— Dave Winer
“Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft … and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.”
— Wernher von Braun
“Assembly language experience is [important] for the maturity and understanding of how computers work that it provides.”
— D. Gries
“A person who is more than casually interested in computers should be well schooled in machine language, since it is a fundamental part of a computer.”
— Donald Knuth
“Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.”
— seen on Slashdot
“Never underestimate an idiot that believes he can.”
— Conrad Fisher
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
— Winston Churchill
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
— Douglas Adams
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
— John Maynard Keynes
- Unusual Place Names in NCOne of my favorite unusual place names in NC is Whynot, NC. When growing up, Mom had to drive through there on the way to Granny’s house in Dudley Shoals (which is near Granite Falls and Hickory and Lenoir). On the way there on US 64, we ‘d drive through Hiddenite, NC (famous because ofContinue reading “Unusual Place Names in NC”
- Mysterious Old House SoundsOver at Scripting News, Dave Winer (the inventor of blogging) posted a recording of sounds [he says similar to a metal door slamming] he’s been hearing his house make (but only when the wind is going fast enough). I listened to the recording; it triggered a memory from my youth, where I heard pretty muchContinue reading “Mysterious Old House Sounds”
Wrabbit Warren 