Quotes from Philip Greenspun

Even the lamest page can be saved by collaboration.

Programmers are isolated. They sit in their cubicle; they don't think about the larger picture. To my mind, a programmer is not an engineer, because an engineer is somebody who starts with a social problem that an organization or a society has and says, "OK, here's this problem that we have- how can we solve it?" The engineer comes up with a clever, cost-effective solution to address that problem, builds it, tests it to make sure it solves the problem. That's engineering.

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

Pilots enjoy the fun and challenge of handling the fancy machine.

An unmarried adult who cannot navigate the welfare system has no choice but to work, but a married working parent is constantly evaluating the relative merits of staying home with the kids versus bringing home that second paycheck.

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.

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

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.

The real challenge of being a flight attendant is getting people out. The training requires that they demonstrate they can evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds, but of course, a lot of stuff that is easy to do in training turns out to be tough in practice.

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.

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