Software Engineers From The United States

"Often you'll see the same three or four data items together in lots of places: fields in a couple of classes, parameters in many method signatures. Bunches of data that hang around together really ought to be made into their own object."

"I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits."

"I always knew that one day Smalltalk would replace Java. I just didn't know it would be called Ruby."

"When you find you have to add a feature to a program, and the program's code is not structured in a convenient way to add the feature, first refactor the program to make it easy to add the feature, then add the feature."

"When you feel the need to write a comment, first try to refactor the code so that any comment becomes superfluous."

"Wow, interesting. I didn't think it was possible to look uncool while wearing a leather jacket and telling people to go fuck themselves, but he pulled it off somehow."

"Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day."

"Russia's slant on the world appears to have penetrated Musk's mind and he is by far Bellingcat's most famous detractor. Bellingcat's Twitter account has periodically disappeared from site searches and Musk himself often retweets conspiracy theories about the group."

"To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic."

"I find history fascinating. There's a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad, that they help you understand the nature of civilization and individuals."

""I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary," as Musk famously said in 2008. In the 15 years since, he has revolutionised electric transport, broken world records in space travel, become the wealthiest person in the world, and made more headlines in a week than most tech CEOs make in their careers."

"[Comments from Christo Grozev of Bellingcat cited by Luce] "Musk is extremely influential. He has a cult following and he's purveying falsehoods. Because of his image among his followers as someone who knows the truth that others can’t see, he is more dangerous than a Trump.""

"Lies can indeed kill and, though there are of course many others, one of the world's most prolific enemies of truth is Elon Musk. He is surely the global far right’s most significant figure, and he holds the world’s largest megaphone."

"We need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we're better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life."

"Musk isn’t promoting liberty; he’s using his power to privilege many of the worst voices in American life."

"There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,"

"This notion though, that you can just sort of send checks out to everybody and things will be fine is not true, obviously. Some have this absurd view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty… that just makes stuff. There’s a magic horn of plenty, and the goods and services, they just come from this magic horn of plenty. And then if somebody has more stuff than somebody else, it’s because they took more from this magic horn of plenty. Now let me just break it to the fools out there: If you don’t make stuff, there’s no stuff. If you don’t make the food, if you don’t process the food, if you don’t transport the food, medical treatment, getting your teeth fixed, there’s no stuff. We’ve become detached from reality. You can’t just legislate money and solve these things. If you don’t make stuff, there is no stuff."

"Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone. As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo."

"It's ironic that Elon Musk, the man who has been talking about getting us to Mars should be Putin's messenger for the war in Ukraine, when we're having a really hard time getting our act together on this planet."

"Elon has always been an introvert thinker. So where a lot of people would go to a great party and have a great time and drink and talk about all sorts of things like rugby or sport, you would find Elon had found the person's library and was going through their books."

"[L]ots of luck on his trip to the moon."

"I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago. The subject matter was space."

"[the DSA] sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation [and that X needs] to be very transparent and clear on what content is permitted under your terms and consistently and diligently enforce your own policies."

"I see a path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined."

"We must pass the great filter!"

"Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions."

"[T]hat laminated-faced hair plug cunt on Twitter."

"Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far they’ve all turned out to be true — if not more true than people thought."

"We [the United States] will coup whoever we want! Deal with it."

"(About Amazon's plan to automate 75% of its operations) It’s insane to think that a human will pack and ship boxes in ten years — it’s game over folks."

"If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny."

"If somebody wants to stay in their house, that’s great. They should be allowed to stay in their house, and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom."

"The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society... That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy. I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love ... That said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences!"

"From a post in the official X profile, 3 November 2025"

"You don't have to be an extrovert to succeed as an entrepreneur. That's because business success is about making smart decisions and solving problems. Just ask Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, who are all self-proclaimed introverts."

"Leon’s, I’ll tell you what, Elon, Elon, is not going to buy Twitter. … He’s got himself a mess. He said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that. He told me he voted for me.’ So, he’s another bullshit artist. But he’s not going to be buying it."

"Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!"

"I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world."

"The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country. Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past, while severely damaging industries of the future."

"I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble . . . I don't know, I find it vaguely therapeutic to express myself on Twitter. It's a way to get messages out to the public."

"No, just like [Unsworth] didn’t clarify he wanted to sodomize me with a submarine. I didn’t think it required clarification, I think that would have been worse. If you called someone a motherf’er I don’t think you would have to clarify you don’t actually commit incest. It would sound disingenuous."

"Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars."

"this bill raises the debt ceiling by $5 TRILLION, the biggest increase in history"

"Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink."

"According to the geological records, earth has been around for around 4.5 billion years, although it was mostly molten magma for about half a billion years... The sun is gradually getting hotter and bigger, and over time, even in the absence of global warming — the man-made stuff — the sun will expand and it will overheat the earth. My guess is probably... there is only several hundred million years left.... Basically, if it took an extra 10% longer for conscious life to evolve on earth, it wouldn't evolve at all, because it would have been incinerated by the sun. ... It appears that consciousness is a very rare and precious thing, and we should take whatever steps we can to preserve the light of consciousness, and the window has been open; only now after four and a half billion years is that window open, that's a long time to wait ... I'm pretty optimistic by nature, but there's some chance that window will not be open for long, I think we should become a multi-planet civilization while that window is open, and if we do the I think probable outcome for Earth is even better, because then you know Mars could help Earth one day. And so I think we should really do our very best to become a multi-planet species and to extend consciousness beyond Earth, and we should do it now. Thank you."

"I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it."

"You are assuming that I wish to be popular. I don't care. I do care that millions of people may die needlessly for an essentially identical outcome. Russia is doing partial mobilization. They go to full war mobilization if Crimea is at risk. Death on both sides will be devastating. Russia has >3 times population of Ukraine, so victory for Ukraine is unlikely in total war. If you care about the people of Ukraine, seek peace."

"Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low fallout nuclear fusion explosions above the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Much like our sun, this would not cause Mars to become radioactive. Not risky imo & can be adjusted/improved real-time. Essentially need to figure out most effective way to convert mass to energy, as Mars is slightly too far from this solar system's fusion reactor (the sun)."

"Something will happen to Earth eventually, it’s just a question of time. Eventually the sun will expand and destroy all life on Earth, so we do need to move at some point, or at least be a multi-planet species. [...] You have to ask the question: do we want to be a space-flying civilisation and a multi-planet species or not? [...] It's a question of what percentage of resources should we devote to such an endeavour? I think if you say 1 per cent of resources, that's probably a reasonable amount."

"This immense level of overspending will drive America into debt slavery!"