!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I  !pleH
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1: No code table for op: ++post
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4.2 BSD UNIX #57: Sun Jun 1 23:02:07 EDT 1986

You swing at the Sun.  You miss.  The Sun swings.  He hits you with a
575MB disk!  You read the 575MB disk.  It is written in an alien
tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes.  You throw the
575MB disk at the Sun.  You hit!  The Sun must repair your eyes.  The
Sun reads a scroll.  He hits your 130MB disk!  He has defeated the
130MB disk!  The Sun reads a scroll.  He hits your Ethernet board!  He
has defeated your Ethernet board!  You read a scroll of "postpone until
Monday at 9 AM".  Everything goes dark...
		-- /etc/motd, cbosgd
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A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa.  As they're driving along the savannah in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.

The biologist: "Look!  A herd of zebras!  And there's a white zebra!
	Fantastic!  We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant.  We only know
	there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
	white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no!  A special case!"
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A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
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A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
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A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not.  To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent.  The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night.  One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question.  In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk.  At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.

From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue.  Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
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A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that works.
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[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
		-- Joseph Campbell
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A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention,
with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequilla.
		-- Mitch Ratcliffe
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A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.
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A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake
without ketchup and mustard.
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A CONS is an object which cares.
		-- Bernie Greenberg.
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A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions
that make it fail.
		-- Jerry Ogdin
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A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
		-- D. Gries
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A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis.
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A hacker does for love what others would not do for money.
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
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A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
		-- Dennis M. Ritchie
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A large number of installed systems work by fiat.  That is, they work
by being declared to work.
		-- Anatol Holt
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A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
		-- Alan Perlis
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A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
		-- Don Knuth
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A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
		-- Fred Brooks
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	A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth.  When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found.  "Where is the
wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
	"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
	Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
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	A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working.  "I will be finished tomorrow," the
programmer promptly replied.
	"I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
	The programmer thought for a moment.  "I have some features that I wish
to add.  This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
	"Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
	The programmer agreed to this.
	Several years later, the manager retired.  On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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	A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well.  As a result, the
manager retained his job.
	The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an
interesting concept, and thus I expect no reward."
	The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee.  Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
	But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program.  If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time.  Can I go now?  I have a program that I'm working on."
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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	A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon."  At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
	So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule."  The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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	A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements
document for a new application.  The manager asked the master: "How long will
it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
	"It will take one year," said the master promptly.
	"But we need this system immediately or even sooner!  How long will it
take it I assign ten programmers to it?"
	The master programmer frowned.  "In that case, it will take two years."
	"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
	The master programmer shrugged.  "Then the design will never be
completed," he said.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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	A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day.  The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game.  "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
	The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master.  "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
	"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
	The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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	A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his novices.
"The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant,"
said the master.
	"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
	"It is," came the reply.
	"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
	"It is even in a video game," said the master.
	"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
	The master coughed and shifted his position slightly.  "The lesson
is over for today," he said.
		-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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A modem is a baudy house.
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