User talk:Lhignight

My Favorite Languages
Language	Proficiency
BASIC	Moderate (Rusty)
C	Skilled (Rusty)
C++	Moderate (Rusty)
C sharp	Skilled
Clojure	Curious (Learning)
Common Lisp	Skilled
Emacs Lisp	Moderate
F#	Curious
Haskell	Novice (Learning)
Java	Skilled
Mathematica	Novice (Learning)
Matlab	Moderate
Prolog	Novice (Learning)
Python	Moderate
R	Skilled
SQL	Skilled
UNIX Shell	Moderate

Why Rosetta Code

I have always found well defined programming tasks to be an extremely beneficial learning tool for developers: whether it be learning a new language, a programming technique, a language paradigm, or simply a new type of problem. Not only does RC provide interesting tasks, but the diversity of the tasks, developers and programming languages is quite outstanding. This is especially true for developers interested in expanding their knowledge beyond mainstream programming languages. After all, you're not likely to benefit from a paradigm or language which you haven't been exposed to at some point. In that regard, most of the tasks that I've implemented on RC involve programming languages that I haven't used extensively at work.

Thankfully, computer science is filled with amusing quotable figures... Enjoy. =)

My Favorite Quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

• The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.
• How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity —in short: what mathematicians call "elegance"— are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
• LISP has been jokingly described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.

My Favorite Quotes by Alan Kay

• Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
• Actually I made up the term "object-oriented", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
• OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them.
• I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

My Favorite Quotes by Larry Wall

• By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals. And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them.
• The camel has evolved to be relatively self-sufficient. (On the other hand, the camel has not evolved to smell good. Neither has Perl.)
• A Perl script is "correct" if it gets the job done before your boss fires you.

A Few Quotes That I Find Amusing

• Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
  • Donald Knuth
• Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++?
  • Richard O'Keefe
• I have a pretty major problem with a language where one of the most common variables has the name $_
  • Brian Hook
• Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use sed." Now they have two problems.
  • Jamie Zawinski
• C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
  • Dennis Ritchie
• Haskell is faster than C++, more concise than Perl, more regular than Python, more flexible than Ruby, more typeful than C#, more robust than Java, and has absolutely nothing in common with PHP.
  • Audrey Tang
• If I were chained to a bench and 'perl' was the only thing that could open the lock, I'd probably cut my hand off.
  • Gerald Penn
• The Largest Disservice to LISP is most frequently done whenever a LISP advocate opens his/her mouth. LISP advocates have been, in my limited and biased experience, some of the most arrogant and condescending bastards in the world. (…) I have heard more than one LISP advocate state such subjective comments as, "LISP is the most powerful and elegant programming language in the world" and expect such comments to be taken as objective truth. I have never heard a Java, C++, C, Perl, or Python advocate make the same claim about their own language of choice.
  • Comment on Slashdot
  • Response: "To be fair, the Java, C++, C, Perl or Python advocate wouldn't have much of a case..."