Philip Greenspun Quotes

If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.

We worried about competitors, but it was an unreasonable fear. As a friend once pointed out, most gunshot wounds are self-inflicted.

We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum.

SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

Even the lamest page can be saved by collaboration.

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

The devil is real. He lives inside C programs.

Although the Buddhists will tell you that desire is the root of suffering, my personal experience leads me to point the finger at system administration.

Remember that in 1993 a company with a bad Web site needed an engineer. Today, a company with a bad Web site needs a psychiatrist.

I don't myself believe in astrology. However, I think that's because I'm a Libra and Libras are always skeptical.

Like most people in Academia, my vision of the future is the same as the average industry person's vision of five years ago.

Most people who are rich chose their parents wisely.

Even within traditional universities there has always been debate about whether it wouldn't be better to focus on only one course at a time.