Jamie Zawinski Quotes

See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy.

Mostly I use the O2 as an X terminal, however, running my apps on Linux and displaying remotely.

Linux is only free if your time has no value.

Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

If you give a cracker a new toy, the first thing he'll do is carve his initials in it. Fortunately, most crackers get over that once they're through puberty.

You can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company.

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

To a database person, every nail looks like a thumb. Or something like that.

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

If you give a hacker a new toy, the first thing he'll do is take it apart to figure out how it works.

I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to Windows, and because, of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot.

I use a really simple calendar program on my computer.

[Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.

I dont get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card.

And when the time comes to replace the O2 I have today, maybe my next machine will run Linux.

I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more.

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

I eat and drink at my desk, but I'm a tidy eater.

Because, you see, what I want to do is to commoditize the OS. I want to have access to all the applications that I need to do the things that I need to do, regardless.

C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.

Your needs are big because the Internet is big.

Our focus in the client group had always been to build products and features that people wanted to use. That we wanted to use. That our moms wanted to use.

There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.

Don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school.

The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don't push it.

Nothing stands still. The real question is can you change it?

You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.

My one purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.