The most damaging phrase in the language is, It's always been done that way. -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. -- Donald Knuth
Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and "great thinking". It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice. -- Steven Den Beste
Something Confusing about "Hard": It's tempting to think that if it's hard, then it's valuable. Most valuable things are hard. Most hard things are completely useless -- (picture of someone smashing their head through concrete blocks kung-fu style). Hard DOES NOT EQUATE TO BEING valuable. Remember Friendster back in the day? You'd sign in, invite friends, have 25 friends, go to their profile, and then it'd show how you were connected to each one. That's an impressive [some geeky CS jargon] Cone traversal of a tree - 100 million string comparisons per page -- it won't scale. Used to take a minute per page to load, and Friendster died a painful death. MySpace -- not interested in solving problems They use the shortcut of "Miss Fitzpatrick is in your extended network" (i.e. even when you're not even signed up for MySpace) They didn't solve the hard problem. But they make the more relevant assumption that you want to be connected to hot women. [LOL] Shows Alexa graph showing that in early 2005 Myspace took off, and quickly bypassed Friendster and never looked back. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007
Je ne vous impose aucune contrainte, aucune limite. Surprenez-moi, étonnez-moi, défiez-moi, défiez-vous vous-même. Vous avez le choix: vous pouvez rester dans l'ombre ou en sortir en étant parmis les trop rares exceptions à avoir réussi. L'heure est venue d'aller bien au delà de votre potentiel. L'heure est venue maintenant de descendre vraiment en vous. L'heure est venue de démontrer pourquoi vous êtes l'élite, les quelques élus, les rares lueurs qui offrent à cette compagnie son caractère exceptionnel, sa luminescence. -- Le PDG de NURV, dans "Anti-trust".
No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side. If you keep waiting, it will comme up. -- Randy Pausch
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost
The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin