Quote of the Day
If you enjoy programming, philosophy, math, or any number of geeky topics, you're in the right place. Every day, I'll post a random quote from my extensive collection of Kindle highlights. Quotes do not necessarily reflect my views or opinions. In fact, part of my epistemic process is to consume a wide variety of contradictory material.
08/16/2020
Higher education is the only product where the consumer tries to get as little out of it as possible. —Arnold Kling, “College Customers vs. Suppliers”
— Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Us
08/15/2020
Raphael had not spontaneously come into possession of his talents; he had become great by responding intelligently to a sense of inferiority that would have led lesser men to despair.
— Alain De Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy
08/14/2020
We’ve all looked at the mess we’ve just made and then have chosen to leave it for another day. We’ve all felt the relief of seeing our messy program work and deciding that a working mess is better than nothing. We’ve all said we’d go back and clean it up later. Of course, in those days we didn’t know LeBlanc’s law: Later equals never.
— Robert C. Martin, The Robert C. Martin Clean Code Collection
08/13/2020
There was a young man who, in his youth, professed a desire to become a great writer. When asked to define “great,” he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level. Stuff that will make them scream, cry, and howl in pain and anger.” He now works at Microsoft, writing error messages.
— Gerald M. Weinberg, Fiona Charles, Keats Kirsch, Dani Weinberg and Earl Everett, Weinberg on Writing
08/12/2020
The keys to flow: There’s a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step (the progress principle).
— Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis
1752 post articles, 351 pages.