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https://github.com/brianspiering/quotes_from_others

A collection of quotes I like
https://github.com/brianspiering/quotes_from_others

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A collection of quotes I like

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README 

        
Quotes From Others

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"I don't need an inspirational quote. I need coffee."  

— A prophet



Table of Contents

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- __[Data](#data)__

- __[Coding](#coding)__

- __[Teaching](#teaching)__

- __[Life](#life)__



----

Data

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"I like my data large, my algorithms simple, and my labels weak."  

— Andrej Karpathy



"I'm not even sure they are sentient - I mean, they're, what, a ten-million-neuron network hooked-up to a syntax engine and a crappy knowledge base? What kind of basis for intelligence is that?"  

— Charles Stross, Accelerando



"Get the data model right and everything else falls into place."  

— ams6110



“Being data-driven is like navigating by watching the rearview mirror.   

Being model-driven is like using GPS.”   

— Nick Elprin



"All data is linear when plotted on a log-log plot with fat marker."  

— Mar's Law



"As you know from teaching introductory statistics, 30 is infinity."    

— Andrew Gelman   



"In God we trust. All others must bring data."   

– W. Edwards Deming



"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."  

— Sherlock Holmes



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Coding

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"Users want functionality, not code."  

— A smart, unknown programmer



"I try to minimize the amount of code I write. Each line of code is just another chance for a typo."  

— A smart, unknown programmer



"Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter."  

— Eric S. Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary



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

— Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and The Bazaar



"Bad programmers worry about the code.   

Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."  

— Linus Torvalds



"Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet."  

— Scott Adams



"The first virtue of a software engineer is laziness — we are going to copy code from people smarter than us."  

— paraphrasing James Aspnes



"The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take."  

– Roy Carlson



"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time.  

The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."  

— Tom Cargill



"2% of what we do is interesting.  

98% is sort, select, sum."   

— A wise old programmer   



"The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers."  

— Richard Hamming



"If you can’t write it down in English, you can’t code it."  

– Peter Halpern



"You can't make it better until you make it work."  

— McBryan's Law



"Make it work,  

Make it right,  

Make it fast.  

In that order."  

— Ken Beck



"If you constantly unpacked everything for deeper understanding, you're never going to get anything done.   

If you don't unpack understanding when you need to, you'll do the wrong thing."  

— Jim Keller   



"We have to realize that computers are simulators and then figure out what to simulate."  

— Alan Kay



"The art of debugging is figuring out what you really told your program to do rather than what you thought you told it to do."  

— Andrew Singer



"I’m not a big visionary. I’m a very plodding pedestrian engineer, and I try to keep my eyes firmly on the ground. I’ll let others make the big predictions about where we’ll be in 5, 10, or 25 years—I think we’ll do fine as long as we keep track of all the small day-to-day details, and try to do the best we can."  

— Linus Torvalds 



"The best new ideas live at the boundary between the real world and software."  

— Adam MacBeth



"We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.    

We believe in: rough consensus and running code."  

— Dave Clark



"Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept."  

— Postel's law



"…highly polarized opinions about languages and frameworks are characteristic of people who lack real-world programming experience and are more interested in building an identity than creating computer programs."   

— https://github.com/nukeop



----

Teaching

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Luke: "You need a teacher. I won't teach you."   

Rey: "Why? I've seen your daily routine; you are not busy."  

— Star Wars, The Force Awakens



"We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet."  

—  Richard Riley  



"Never lecture on something students can read instead."   

— David Pengelley from _From lecture to active learning: Rewards for all, and is it really so difficult?_



"I've got a lot to teach but even more to learn."   

— Slug from Atmosphere



"Sufficiently advanced cheating is indistinguishable from learning."  

— Jan Schaumann @jschauma  



"When encountering your weaknesses, you have four choices:     

1. You can deny them (which is what most people do).     

2. You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them to strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change).     

3. You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them.     

4. Or, you can change what you are going after. "     

— Ray Dalio 



"Any drill that 75% of the people cannot catch on to right away has to be eliminated, no matter how good it is."  

— Steve Baccari



"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."  

— Edwin Schlossberg



"Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie Munger calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly."   

— Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway 2021 Annual Report  



"Under pressure, we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training."   

– Archilochus  



Will McAvoy: "You have ink on your face."  

Mackenzie MacHale: "I WORK WITH PENS!"  

(I often have dry eraser marker on me when I teach.)    

— The Newsroom



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Life

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“There was nothing to do except to work hard, struggle for food, visit quietly with friends, and wait for peace.”   

— Picasso during the WWII German occupation of Paris  



"The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears."  

— Karl Popper



"It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting."  

— Unknown



"It doesn't get any easier, you just get faster."   

— Greg LeMond



"Behind mountains are more mountains."  

— Creole proverb  



"There is no amount of work you could do today that will offset the progress you could have made in a properly structured week."   

— Chris Sommer  



"The difference between theory and practice is always greater in practice than it is in theory."  

— Unknown



"Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress."   

— Paul Dirac



"A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept."  

— John Ousterhout 



"Little and often over the long haul."  

— Dan John  



"I'm here to help - if my help's not appreciated then lotsa luck, gentlemen."  

— The Wolf from Pulp Fiction   



"Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy", translated as "Not my circus, not my monkeys."  

— Polish proverb  



"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."  

— Friedrich Nietzsche  



"The clock does not stop, of course, but we do not hear the ticking."  

— Gary Eberle



“I’m no genius, but I’m smart in spots and I stay around those spots.”  

— Watson, Sr.



"For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."  

— H. L. Mencken



"There is more truth in the lightning that defines our path a handful of times in our life than in all of the ordinary light combined."  

— Todd Skinner



“Maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”   

— Chuck Palahniuk



"Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days."  

— Nic Haralambous



"If it is important, do it every day. If it isn’t, don’t do it at all."   

— Dan Gable



“If you haven't built the foundation, don't paint the ceiling.”   

— Dan John



"Repetition is the mother of implementation."   

— Dan John  



"Perfectionism is the purest form of procrastination."   

— Lanny Bassham



"An invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started."  

— Ray Kurzweil



"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."  

— Tim Notke



"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."   

— Albert Einstein



"Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life."  

– Jerzy Gregorek



“It is better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong.”  

– Warren Buffet



"Only recruit two things: speed and smarts. You can teach everything else."   

— Ralph Maughan



"The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed."   

— William Gibson



"Your lemons ripen first, you have to wait for juicy plums."  

— Classic investing wisdom



"What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems."   

— John Gardner



"A bet is a tax on bullshit.”  

— Alex Tabarrok



"The true skill is not coming up with good ideas, it's being clever and creative enough to figure out quick, cheap, and easy ways to test all your bad ideas."  

— Marc Randolph  



"What's the name for a company that can be valued at a billion dollars before they see a dime in revenue?  

A Panda — By all laws of nature they should no longer exist, but due to human intervention, they do."  

— Internet forums



"Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities."  

— Tibetan Saying, One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein



"Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past for the possibility of a better future."  

— Unknown



“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall."  

— E. O. Wilson



"Do what you can,   

with what you've got,   

where you are."  

— Stoic philosophy



"Start where you are  

Use what you have  

Help who you can"  

— Greg Wilson



"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them."   

— Stephen King



-----

Collections of other quotes

-----



- [Programming Bumper Stickers / Programming Pearls](http://www.bowdoin.edu/~ltoma/teaching/cs340/spring05/coursestuff/Bentley_BumperSticker.pdf)

- [Programming quotes curated by Ronalds Vilciņš](https://www.ronaldsvilcins.com/2020/12/10/programming-quotes/)

- [Peter Norvig's quotations](https://norvig.com/quotations.html)  

- [Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design](https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html)