Meta-design Is Much More Difficult

When You Write A Program, Think Of It Primarily As A Work Of Literature. You're Trying To Write Something That Human Beings Are Going To Read. Don't Think Of It Primarily As Something A Computer Is Going To Follow. The More Effective You Are At Making Your Program Readable, The More Effective It's Going To Be: You'll Understand It Today, You'll Understand It Next Week, And Your Successors Who Are Going To Maintain And Modify It Will Understand It.

My First Program Taught Me A Lot About The Errors That I Was Going To Be Making In The Future, And Also About How To Find Errors. That's Sort Of The Story Of My Life, Making Errors And Trying To Recover From Them. I Try To Get Things Correct. I Probably Obsess About Not Making Too Many Mistakes.

Let Us Change Our Traditional Attitude To The Construction Of Programs. Instead Of Imagining That Our Main Task Is To Instruct A Computer What To Do, Let Us Concentrate Rather On Explaining To Human Beings What We Want A Computer To Do.

Everyday Life Is Like Programming, I Guess. If You Love Something You Can Put Beauty Into It.

Always Remember, However, That There’s Usually A Simpler And Better Way To Do Something Than The First Way That Pops Into Your Head.