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computer

... Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI,
Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor
applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge
Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language,
Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring
just because these are the only things they happened to list.
	-- Kent M. Pitman

Unix makes easy tasks hard and hard tasks possible. Windows makes easy tasks
easy and hard tasks $29.95.
	-- /. #5817924 istartedi

Toddlers might sometimes wonder why people need to learn so many words and
learn to speak in complicated phrases, when it seems that all you really
need to do is point and cry to get what you want. Then we grow up.
	-- /. #5817410 wotevah, in reference to complaint about shell scripting

When you design a macro, you're designing a new programming language [...] but
there are people that I don't want to design a new programming language, that
I'm going to have to edit the program for.
	-- Todd Proebsting (LL2 2002)

It seems that the folks who designed the C++ template system ...  reinvented
the wheel. The C++ lug nuts have been praised, but the squarish shape of the
C++ wheel is often criticized.
	-- William Clinger (comp.lang.scheme)

This is reminiscent of the old platonic girl friend problem. You know, when
you're friends with a girl you really like and they claim to need to find a guy
that's just like you but not you. In this case you want an OS that's just like
Windows but not Windows. Based on the analogy I*ve provided the best I can
suggest is that you give up
	-- #541830 /.

APL is a flawless diamond, perfect, symmetrical, an irreducible whole.  But add
anything to it, and it's ruined.  LISP is a bucket of mud; add anything to it,
and it's still a bucket of mud.

Shooting yourself in the foot: APL --
You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember
enough linear algebra to understand what happened.

Shooting yourself in the foot: Smalltalk --
You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your
boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation, and makes you develop
in COBOL on a character terminal.

"Scheme is simply redundant. It should be a subset of ANSI Common Lisp." ...
this is a little like saying "Relational calculus is simply redundant.  It
should be a subset of SQL-92."
	-- Anton van Straaten (comp.lang.scheme)

Regardless of what you might find wrong with the code, there is one thing that
is right. It works. Its value is that it works and has worked. Find a way to
respect that value before you do anything.
	-- k5 epepke

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

If my game sinks or swims according to its AI, C is a suboptimal choice. If my
game sinks or swims because it calls a foreign API, the year is 1980.
	-- eLuddite k5

Many people prefer C for the same reason many people prefer solving crossword
puzzles instead of writing novels. That is to say, C is popular because
(re)solving pointless puzzles is stereotypical geek behavior.
	-- eLuddite k5

The more I keep dealing with computers, the more it resembles a bad redneck
romance: constantly flipping between "I love you so much!" and "Baby, why you
gotta make me hit you?"
	-- Armaphine k5

Many other languages are simpler to learn in part because they limit one's
choice.
	-- GoingWare k5

Having to play Mr. Compiler is not a useful "choice". Nowadays we use computers
to do the tedious grunt work so that we dont have to. Apparently, everyone
except C/C++ programmers understands the value of computers. It's funny because
it's true.
	-- eLuddite k5

There's nothing wrong with the IT industry that shooting every person who works
in HR wouldn't fix overnight.
	-- k5 katie

Seen in help-wanted ad: "You must have 5 years' experience with .NET"
	-- k5 quartz (December 2000)

For those of you who don't know what Trellix is...*shudder* I cannot even
explain it. It's kind of like FrontPage for people with Down's.
	-- k5 communista

"Sure, you're not tracking down seg faults in your pointerless language, but that
doesn't mean it works! You're just tracking down something else instead!"

"You know what I'm tracking down instead of seg faults? A cold beer! That's what I'm
tracking down, Chester! And I'm bangin' Claudia Schiffer! Functional programming
rules!"
	-- k5 jacob

The Unix design philosophy in 5 words:
Maximize opportunities for serendipitous parsimony.

"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about
Exchange Server next.

Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it
would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of
bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms.
But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly
pouring beer on each other.
	-- Joel Spolsky

You don't go to a nightclub to get information, you go to a library. Which fits
the description exactly.
	-- /. #112953

"It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get
stupider people." -- Call Linus, I think we have a new slogan.

Windows is based on threads, while UNIX is based on pipes.
Don't forget:
MacOS is based on yarn.
AmigaOS is based on wires.
DOS is based on twisty-ties.

Mozilla -- reinventing the wheel, one spoke at a time.
	-- /. #102596

"I just want you to know that I can write slicker and tighter code than John
[Carmack]."
	-- Bill Gates

The utility of an operating system is more proportional to the number of
connections possible between its components than it is to the number of
those components.
	-- Hans Reiser

"C is the language that believes that the programmer knows what he wants and
deserves to get it, good and hard."
	-- H.L. Menken, paraphrased

Have you let Emacs into your heart?

Are you praising It today, brother? Are you typing in Its holy name?

Has anyone shared this editor with you? I know that this editor is the one true
editor.
	-- e2 LagMan

My new years resolution is 1024x768
	-- /. #544860
This year, I resolve to 127.0.0.1.
	-- /. #253182

I do however think that vi is a drug, did you ever catch yourself laughing while using vi?
	-- /. #3096

Suggested Microsoft slogan -- "Windows: It Does That Sometimes"

"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
	-- Microsoft advertisement

"One thing you don't want to do is publically flame someone who still has your
root passwords."
	-- Kurt Gray, andover.net

[optimist@localhost]$ head TODO
[optimist@localhost]$

"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
	-- Bruce Ediger, in comp.os.linux.misc

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest
of your life."
	-- Michael Sinz

You're in a twisty maze of standards, all different.

"Someone on IRC was very sad about the uptime of his machine wrapping from 497
days to 0."
	-- linux-kernel

"If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes.
Someone in the group has to be the manager."
	-- T. Cheatham

"Pascal is a language for children wanting to be naughty."
	-- Dr. Kasi Ananthanarayanan

"Well, let's just say, if your VCR is still blinking 12:00, you don't want Linux."
	-- Bruce Perens

"C++ is more of a rube-goldberg type thing full of high-voltages, large
chain-driven gears, sharp edges, exploding widgets, and spots to get your
fingers crushed.  And because of it's complexity many (if not most) of it's
users don't know how it works, and can't tell ahead of time what's going to
cause them to lose an arm."
	-- Grant Edwards

"The scarcest resource is development time. No way to do a baby in one month
using 9 women."
	-- /. #144654

"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking
zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
	-- Robert Firth

"... Developers seize on the first thing they like and congeal and harden
around it, forever after ignoring anything else that comes along. The
popularity of programming languages and other technologies has next to nothing
to do with technical considerations and everything to do with the same instinct
that makes 13-year-old girls decide they all like Britney Spears
simultaneously."
	-- /. Angst Badger 8/20/00

It appears that /dev/null is a conforming XSL processor.

"Why should we limit computers to the lies people tell them through keyboards?"
	-- Bill Gospar, 1965, MIT

Wasn't it the Heisenberg Principal that stated whenever a person says "Emacs",
another person somewhere is saying "vi" at the exact same time?

"We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
	-- Linus Torvalds on the Amsterdam Linux Symposium

I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. :-)
	-- Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio

M-x thermo-nuclear-warfare

A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.

vi vi vi, the text editor of the beast.

Emacs is a wonderful operating environment, but it lacks a good text editor.
That's why I use vi.

Emacs is the OS, linux is the device driver.

"Parse error: expect unexpected"
	-- Awk

Unix: Where /sbin/init is still Job 1

Inscription found at Pompeii: Nero MCCCXXXVII VkrIpVII kIddXIII est.

"...smart people are always heroic. Compare the works of Alan Turing to the
works of Jesus. Who is more heroic? Why, Alan Turing, of course, because Jesus
couldn't come up with a Universal Turing Machine (the basis for modern computer
science) without some kind of Divine Intervention, which is cheating. Turing
was also gay, but that only annoys the trolls, and there are little pieces of
the 'Secret Gospel of Jesus' which imply strongly that Jesus may also have been
gay."
	-- /.

Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the
grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin
charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what
they say if they had.

"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
	-- Karl Lehenbauer

Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style.

"Reboot macht Frei."

mysql> DELETE FROM world.human_race WHERE iq < 100;
Query OK, 3.45 billion rows affected (0.01 sec)

The requirements said "Windows 98 or better", so I installed Linux.

"We are going to do fewer things very well."
	-- Microsoft president Steve Ballmer, USA Today, 3 September 1999

A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without bricks
tied to its head.

In other news ... Microsoft reports that Oceania has /always/ been at war with
Eurasia.
	-- /. #22422

"Nothing says backwards-compatible-lovin like working on a file with a creation
date over a decade ago."
	-- /. AC Microsoft ex-employee

MCSE: Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert.

Working with Unix is like wrestling with a worthy opponent. Working with
Windows is like attacking a small whiney child who's carrying a .38.
	-- k5 FyreFiend

Yeah, well... I'm entirely too lazy to wrestle. So instead, I keep shooting the
small child in the head and replacing him with another identical small child. I
mean, fuck wrestling. Smack it around and make it your bitch.
	-- k5 Armaphine

Does anyone think the phrase "Windows ME" strikingly resembles the phrase "Rape
Me"?

Windows 95 installer: "Everything you do will be more fun!"

Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: "FEATURE"

Dude, what would the point of a trade show be if you were going to see stuff
that is available? Thats like going to a strip club where all the dancers are
ex-girlfriends.

Currently many people are finding it less costly in the long run to create new
operating systems instead of using those commercially available. That alone
tells you we have had a near complete failure of the laws on software IP. It is
long past due for a change.
	-- /. #91866

Once you start down the path of irregular syntax, lexing will forever dominate
your language.  Consume you it will.
	-- David Steuber <87zmqfypbs.fsf@david-steuber.com>

With computers, you can't get something for nothing, unless you
were getting nothing for something before.
	-- Bill Mark, UT Professor

Alice: "I'll need to know your requirements before I start to design the software. First of all, what are you trying to accomplish?"
User: "I am trying to make you design my software"
Alica: "I mean what are you trying to accomplish with the software?"
User: "I won't know what I can accomplish until you tell me what the software can do"
Alice: "Try to get this concept through your thick skull: the software can do whatever I design it to do"
(pause)
User: "Can you design it to tell you my requirements?"
	-- Dilbert