“Our civilization depends critically on software, and we have a dangerously low degree of professionalism in the computer fields”

C++ is designed to allow you to express ideas, but if you don’t have ideas or don’t have any clue about how to express them, C++ doesn’t offer much help.

Most of the programmers in ten years will be us, and we won’t get much smarter.

This evolution may compromise Java’s claim of being simpler than C++, but my guess is that the effort will make Java a better language than it is today.

Java isn’t platform independent; it is a platform

I assume that a sufficiently skilled will be able to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the hardware.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

I would encourage nonproprietary standards for tools and libraries.

Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful.

I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining

Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.

Some software is actually pretty good, by any standard. Think of the Mars Rovers, Google, and the Human Genome Project. Now, that’s quality software!

When done well, software is invisible.

The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.

I like doing research that has an impact. If I went to a company to make what they call ‘real money,’ I’d be just trying to make a system work as fast as possible to meet the product and serice deadlines.

With the increasing importance of standards for system-level objects such as COM and CORBA, it is particularly important that the C++ bindings to those be clean, well documented, and simple to use.

Men and women succeed because they find a field of endeavor that matches their interests and abilities.

It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn’t have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.

Kissing was something I did a lot of. Kissing in a wheat field as the sun begins to set on a summer’s evening, with the haze of that light.

In my heart, I know I haven’t been the best person, the best quarterback for the Steelers, I’m not talking just on the field, I’m talking off the field.

For it is in the field where meaning is constitutive that man’s freedom reaches its highest point.

If we recognize our talents and use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, we will rise to the top of our field.

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

when your field is architecture, you go visit the great cathedrals of the world. My field was relationships. I got married many times. I was practicing. I didn’t date much; I just would get married. I thought, why waste time?