Category Archives: Quotes

“programmers should not be puzzle-minded …. We would be much better served by clean, systematic minds, with a sense of elegance.” — Dijkstra (In interview as reported in CACM)

“[Languages] should be treated as a part of a modelling theory. Up to now I don’t think we had sufficient incentive to make sure that our languages are close to scientific models. It’s only with the onset of computation as … Continue reading →

“I consider a priori a law… Without this belief, … interpolation would be impossible; no law could be deduced from a finite number of observations; science would not exist.” — Poincare (1913, p. 170)

“If one is interested in the relations between fields which, according to customary academic divisions, belong to different departments, then he will not be welcomed as a builder of bridges, as he might have expected, but will rather be regarded … Continue reading →

“programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute” — Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman (1996)

“The colon has more effect than the comma, less power to separate than the semicolon, and more formality than the dash.” “A dash is a mark of separation stronger than the comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed … Continue reading →

“To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.” — Poincare (1913, p. 27)

“All the chemist can do is to find out what Nature permits, and any substances that are thus developed or discovered are inherently natural. It is very important to remember that.” — Buckminster Fuller (1963, p. 76)

“To the unsophisticated observer of mathematics, it may appear that the use of numbers is the critical characteristic of disciplines which use mathematics, and that one can thus make a discipline more scientific by involving numbers in it more deeply. … Continue reading →

“Our main aim is to build up a system of formal rules representing in the best possible way informal (mathematical) reasoning.” — Martin-Löf (1984, p. 4)