Quotes About Innovation

In 1951, Grace Murray Hopper, a mathematician with the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ordnance Naval Reserve, conceived of a program called a compiler, which translated a programmer's instructions into the strings of ones and zeroes, or machine language, that ultimately controlled the computer. In principle, compilers seemed just the thing to free programmers from the tyranny of hardware and the mind-numbing binary code. Hopper

They arose very quickly, became a profession very rapidly, and were all too soon infected with a certain amount of resistance to change. The very programmers whom I have heard almost castigate a customer because he would not change his system of doing business are the same people who at times walk into my office and say, "But we have always done it this way." It is for this reason that I now have a counterclockwise clock hanging in my office. In

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done.

In these days of conflict between ancient and modern studies, there must surely be something to be said for a study which did not begin with Pythagoras, and will not end with Einstein, but is the oldest and the youngest of all.

You can declare at the very start that it's impossible to write a novel nowadays, but then, behind your back, so to speak, give birth to a whopper, a novel to end all novels.

Fashion changes, style remains.

If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.

For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old.

A programmer is a diviner of possible outcomes, and a seer of unseen worlds.

I don't think that every last bit of the programming has to be original. You have this purity thing, but seriously, no one will care. There is no purity in art. The process of how you arrive at something doesn't matter at all. The game is going to be completely original because we made it. If you have access to a tool that will help, there is no reason not to use that tool.

Sam would later tell people that these mazes were his first attempts at writing games. "A maze," he would say, "is a video game distilled to its purest form." Maybe so, but this was revisionist and self-aggrandizing. The mazes were for Sadie. To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.

To design a game is to imagine the person who will eventually play it.

Computers are great for experimentation, but they're bad for deep thinking.

You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying any attention to you and it's a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better.

In a world of planar surfaces, someone became 3D

Commander Keen, Myst, Doom, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Leisure Suit Larry, The Colonel's Bequest, Ultima, Warcraft, Monkey Island, The Oregon Trail

Sadie," he said. "Do you know why I want to make a game?" "Of course. Because you foolishly think it will make you rich and famous." "No. It's very simple. I want to make something that will make people happy.

But sometimes, you have to make your game in the time that you have. If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.

Sadie knew that the key to making a video game on limited resources was to make the limitations part of the style.

To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind

If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.