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

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

That is one of the most distinctive differences between school and the real world: there is no reward for putting in a good effort. In fact, the whole concept of a "good effort" is a fake idea adults invented to encourage kids. It is not found in nature. -- Paul Graham

Being a programmer is the same way. The only way to be a good programmer is to write code. When you realize you haven't been writing much code lately, and it seems like all you do is brag about code you wrote in the past, and people start looking at you funny while you're shooting your mouth off, realize it's because they know. They might not even know they know, but they know. So, yes, doing what you love brings success, and by all means, throw yourself a nice big party, buy yourself a nice car, soak up the adulation of an adoring crowd. Then shut the fuck up and get back to work. -- Sincerity Theory

As builders and creators finding the perfect solution should not be our main goal. We should find the perfect problem. -- Isaac (blog comment)

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

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. ~Colin R. Davis

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. ~Maya Angelou

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn