Philip Greenspun Quotes

C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.

I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location.

Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1978 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.

Never forget that the devil is there 24/7 too. He's very, very busy.

For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

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

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

Accidental stacks considered harmful.

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.

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

The devil isn't made by what Mommy says or what Daddy says. The devil is there.

So now the devil's in my soul.

C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.

Real quality means making sure that people are proud of the code they write, that they're involved and taking it personally.

There is a devil, and he knows my name.

The devil is only a convenient myth invented by the real malefactors of our world.

You don't think of the devil who's inside.

That there is a Devil, is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.

He knockin' on the door, let the devil in.

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

You never know when the devil might come calling.

The devil comes to bring a fate you couldn't imagine in your wildest dream.

As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way.

I called out to God, but the devil keeps answering.