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We will never run out of things to program as long as there is a single program around.
We have the mini and the micro computer. In what semantic niche would the pico computer fall?
We kid ourselves if we think that the ratio of procedure to data in an active data-base system can be made arbitrarily small or even kept small.
Motto for a research laboratory: What we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
In a 5 year period we get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the 5 year period will be.
If we believe in data structures, we must believe in independent (hence simultaneous) processing. For why else would we collect items within a structure? Why do we tolerate languages that give us the one without the other?
Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.
When we write programs that "learn", it turns out that we do and they don't.
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub- systems and so on ad infinitum - which is why we're always starting over.
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- except our fingertips will have been singed.
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
The goal of computation is the emulation of our synthetic abilities, not the understanding of our analytic ones.
The most important computer is the one that rages in our skulls and ever seeks that satisfactory external emulator. The standarization of real computers would be a disaster - and so it probably won't happen.
In programming, everything we do is a special case of something more general -- and often we know it too quickly.
There will always be things we wish to say in our programs that in all known languages can only be said poorly.
Perhaps if we wrote programs from childhood on, as adults we'd be able to read them.