"The theory is the result of listening to the problem. When the theory acquires a life of its own because some people like it more than the real world, all kinds of uninspiring, uninteresting things happen, so the key is both to listen to the problem and to study the theory. But always remember that just as much theory is bunk as there are buggy solutions. There is nothing more wrong with "theory" than "solutions" – both their quality and their applicability are orthogonal to their existence."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Re: "Choose the Right Language" in "Tutorial" by Norvig and Pitman (Usenet article).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Erik Naggum
Erik Naggum (June 13, 1965 – June 17, 2009) was a Lisp programmer.
120 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Erik Naggum →
Related Quotes
"… so as long as you do The Right Thing and forget how you would do it in C, you should be able to get a good g…"
"C being what it is lacks support for multiple return values, so the notion that it is meaningful to pass pointers to …"
"Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask…"
"In C++, reinvention is its own reward."
"C++ is a language strongly optimized for liars and people who go by guesswork and ignorance."
"Just as other information should be available to those who want to learn and understand, program source code is the o…"
"Life is too long to be good at C++ – if you had spent all that time to become good at it, you would essentially…"
"Short of coming to their senses and abolishing the whole thing, we might expect that the rules for daylight saving ti…"
"Intellectual laziness is punishable by brain death. It is a natural law."
"C is not clean – the language has many gotchas and traps, and although its semantics are simple in some sense, …"