Brainpower Is By Far Our

Several People Have Told Me That My Inability To Suffer Fools Gladly Is One Of My Main Weaknesses.

In This Respect A Program Is Like A Poem: You Cannot Write A Poem Without Writing It. Yet People Talk About Programming As If It Were A Production Process And Measure "programmer Productivity" In Terms Of "number Of Lines Of Code Produced". In So Doing They Book That Number On The Wrong Side Of The Ledger: We Should Always Refer To "the Number Of Lines Of Code Spent".

Lisp Has Jokingly Been Described As "the Most Intelligent Way To Misuse A Computer." I Think That Description Is A Great Compliment Because It Transmits The Full Flavour Of Liberation: It Has Assisted A Number Of Our Most Gifted Fellow Humans In Thinking Previously Impossible Thoughts.

If We Wish To Count Lines Of Code, We Should Not Regard Them As "lines Produced" But As "lines Spent."

… What Society Overwhelmingly Asks For Is Snake Oil. Of Course, The Snake Oil Has The Most Impressive Names — Otherwise You Would Be Selling Nothing — Like “structured Analysis And Design”, “software Engineering”, “maturity Models”, “management Information Systems”, “integrated Project Support Environments” “object Orientation” And “business Process Re-engineering”.