The venerable master Qc Na was walking with his student, Anton. Hoping to prompt the master into a discussion, Anton said "Master, I have heard that objects are a very good thing - is this true?" Qc Na looked pityingly at his student and replied, "Foolish pupil - objects are merely a poor man's closures." Chastised, Anton took his leave from his master and returned to his cell, intent on studying closures. He carefully read the entire "Lambda: The Ultimate..." series of papers and its cousins, and implemented a small Scheme interpreter with a closure-based object system. He learned much, and looked forward to informing his master of his progress. On his next walk with Qc Na, Anton attempted to impress his master by saying "Master, I have diligently studied the matter, and now understand that objects are truly a poor man's closures." Qc Na responded by hitting Anton with his stick, saying "When will you learn? Closures are a poor man's object." At that moment, Anton became enlightened. -- Anton van Straaten (Na = Norman Adams, Qa = Christian Queinnec)

Seize any opportunity, or anything that looks like opportunity. They are rare, much rarer than you think... -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Black Swan".

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- Edsger Dijkstra

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. -- Martin Golding

Some people suggest that machines would be friendlier if input could be in a natural language. But natural language is probably the worst kind of input because it can be quite ambiguous. The process of retrieving information from the computer would be so time-consuming that you would be better off spending that time getting the information directly from an expert. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).

640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates, 1981

Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. ~Francis Chan

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowledge is being aware of what you can do. Wisdom is knowing when not to do it. ~Anonymous

What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable. ~Anonymous