Profound Programming Wisdom

Writing is not a science, it's an art.
You can codify writing like Heinlein, Herbert, Dickens and Rand.
No matter how many average writers you put together in a room, you won't end up with the Dune saga.
Complexity is the enemy of elegance and power.
C, Lisp, python are so popular because they are elegant, simple, and thus powerful.
It's not its complexity that makes a system great, it's its simplicity.
Likewise Shakespeare.
>Coding is not an art. It's a science. No matter how good the code is, it can be taken apart and understood by others.
Likewise Shakespeare, Heinlein, Asimov, etc. Yet still art. Because while you can reduce it to 26 + punctuation, it's the organization in time and space that makes them unique.
Great code just works, and nobody needs to go back and fix it later, because it's never going to be broken.
If it needs to be modified, you say.
I reply, why?
Because it no longer performs the needed business function you say.
I ask: And that means its broken?
You say: No, it means it needs to do something else.
I Reply: You mean, a different function?
Exactly, you beam.
I counter: Follow the Unix Way: Each program does one thing: What you need is another program.
You slouch. You know I am right.
Zen lesson over.

[ 03 March 2005 1:04 am submitted by Unknown ]