Industry Suffers From The Managerial Dogma That

So-called "natural Language" Is Wonderful For The Purposes It Was Created For, Such As To Be Rude In, To Tell Jokes In, To Cheat Or To Make Love In (and Theorists Of Literary Criticism Can Even Be Content-free In It), But It Is Hopelessly Inadequate When We Have To Deal Unambiguously With Situations Of Great Intricacy, Situations Which Unavoidably Arise In Such Activities As Legislation, Arbitration, Mathematics Or Programming.

The Traditional Mathematician Recognizes And Appreciates Mathematical Elegance When He Sees It. I Propose To Go One Step Further, And To Consider Elegance An Essential Ingredient Of Mathematics: If It Is Clumsy, It Is Not Mathematics.

Lisp Has Jokingly Been Described As "the Most Intelligent Way To Misuse A Computer." I Think That Description Is A Great Compliment Because It Transmits The Full Flavour Of Liberation: It Has Assisted A Number Of Our Most Gifted Fellow Humans In Thinking Previously Impossible Thoughts.

Simplicity Is Prerequisite For Reliability.

When I Came Back From Munich, It Was September, And I Was Professor Of Mathematics At The Eindhoven University Of Technology. Later I Learned That I Had Been The Department's Third Choice, After Two Numerical Analysts Had Turned The Invitation Down; The Decision To Invite Me Had Not Been An Easy One, On The One Hand Because I Had Not Really Studied Mathematics, And On The Other Hand Because Of My Sandals, My Beard And My "arrogance" (whatever That May Be).