Hal Abelson Quotes

Good code is its own best documentation.

Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so consider picking the most readable one.

Often in writing programs, articulation and clarity are more important than what you actually say.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

Certainly not every good program is object-oriented, and not every object-oriented program is good.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

Not only does Yahoo! have a unique franchise, it increasingly has industry-leading tools, technology and, most importantly, people.

It's not a faith in technology. It's faith in people.

The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it's pointless.

My favorite language for maintainability is Python. It has simple, clean syntax, object encapsulation, good library support, and optional named parameters.

I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.

I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests.

Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer.

It is a high bar to say that it's more fun than working on software because the work at Microsoft that both Melinda [Gates] and I did was thrilling. We were making breakthroughs and empowering people.

Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

We have so much access to one another through technology and everything else, that we're very much used to people being real. When folks go on TV and they're basically acting - if they were good actors they'd be acting and paid for it for a living, but they're not good actors. When we see bad acting, it doesn't look like bad acting, it looks weird, and we are turned off by it. I'm not talking about anybody in particular, that's just politics right now. This generation, I feel like, has incredible bullshit detectors.

A 'goto' in Perl falls into the category of hard things that should be possible, not easy things that should be easy.

We’re no longer in the days where every program is super well crafted. But at the heart of the programs that make it to the top, you’ll find that the key internal code was done by a few people who really knew what they were doing.

Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

[Computing] is just a fabulous place for that, because it's a place where you don't have to be a Ph.D. or anything else. It's a place where you can still be an artisan. People are willing to pay you if you're any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.

People felt like they were friends with Google, and they believed in the "Do No Evil" thing that Google said. They trusted Google more than they trusted the government, and I never understood that.