Grace Hopper Quotes

Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.

Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler.

People don't want to change. It's hard for people to change and it's hard for businesses to change. If I was running an oil company, I would be resistant to change too.

Most people (by the time they have become adults ) can't change their minds because their neural pathways have become set... the longer neural pathways have been running one way the harder it is to rewire them.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

People like change in general, but not in particular.

I had a running compiler and nobody would touch it. They told me computers could only do arithmetic.

The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.

She live in a mindset that I could never move to

People will suffer almost anything, as long as it means they don't have to change.

Have you ever thought, when something dreadful happens, 'a moment ago things were not like this; let it be then, not now, anything but now'? And you try and try to remake then, but you know you can't. So you try to hold the moment quite still and not let it move on and show itself.

The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

. . . Luddites were those frenzied traditionalists of the early 19th century who toured [England] wrecking new weaving machines on the theory that if they were destroyed . . . old jobs and old ways of life could be preserved . . . At certain times in his life each man is tempted to become a Luddite, for there is always something he would like to go back to. But to be against all change-against change in the abstract-is folly.

Developers, developers, developers...

People.. especially people in positions of power.. have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently.

Developers, developers, developers, developers.

People hate the feeling that technology is dragging them into the future, that they're not really following what's happening, but being forced to be involved. Even if it makes their life better, it still feels like it's happening against their will.

Admittedly, we must move ahead with the development of our land resources. Likewise, our technology must be refined. But in the long run life will succeed only in a life-giving environment, and we can no longer afford unnecessary sacrifices of living space and natural landscape to 'progress.'

The problem is, most people don't like to hear suggestions that directly confront or run counter to their most sacred beliefs.

All of my friends are really good dancers, which was initially why I never danced - we'd go out and they would kill it and I'd be like, "Yeah, I'm just gonna sit at the bar." I broke my foot, and I couldn't run for a year, but I realized I could kind of dance. It reminded me how amazing dance is; it's so in tune with music - it is music. It's a physical expression of whatever music is. On stage, you're interacting with things - physical things. So I've really started to like and notice the way people move with music.

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby.

At the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it.