The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

A tail call allows a function to return the result of another function without leaving an entry on the stack. Tail recursion is a specific case of tail calling. -- ASPN : Python Cookbook : Explicit Tail Call

You will never become a Great Programmer until you acknowledge that you will always be a Terrible Programmer. You will remain a Great Programmer for only as long as you acknowledge that you are still a Terrible Programmer. -- Marc (http://kickin-the-darkness.blogspot.com/)

C’s great for what it’s great for. -- Ben Hoyts (micropledge)

The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. -- Edsger Dijkstra

It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. -- John Von Neumann, circa 1949

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong

We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers