Yukihiro Matsumoto Quotes

I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining.

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either.

Take Lisp, you know its the most beautiful language in the world -- at least up until Haskell came along.

What works for one person's needs is almost always very different from the next.

If you're talking about Java in particular, Python is about the best fit you can get amongst all the other languages. Yet the funny thing is, from a language point of view, JavaScript has a lot in common with Python, but it is sort of a restricted subset.

I don't argue style on the basis of tastes. If you feel like you've reached your personal best, don't change.

So many men, so many opinions: to each his own way.

Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy.

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.

What's fun for other people may not be fun for you- and vice versa.

As long as you make your own decision and do thing because it feels good to you, there will always be people who agree and people who don’t.

I think it's very pretty. Can it be pretty if no one thinks it's pretty? I think it's pretty. If you're the only one? That's pretty pretty. And what about the boys? Don't you want them to think you're pretty? I wouldn't want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty.

To me, anything goes. But that's me.

Any two people have different ideas of what is important.

Each person bears a fear which is special to him. One man fears a close space and another man fears drowning; each laughs at the other and calls him stupid. Thus fear is only a preference, to be counted the same as the preference for one woman or another, or mutton for pig, or cabbage for onion.

I always have a problem liking things that I'm told I should like. This has been the problem with most of the Wonders I have seen so far. The fact that this one is called the 'Great' Wall of China annoys me. I'll decide if it's great or not. It might end up being the 'All Right Wall of China' to me.

It's hard to tell what people realize. Everybody's different and has a different understanding of the difference in times.

Now, I'm not the only language designer with irrationalities. You can think of some languages to go with some of these things.

I don't think it's important for everyone necessarily, and I totally respect that because everyone writes differently.

Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.

Whenever the C++ language designers had two competing ideas as to how they should solve some problem, they said, "OK, we'll do them both". So the language is too baroque for my taste.

Expenditure--like ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.

The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.