Some quotes and thoughtlets collected over the years. Some are my own, though I don’t know which ones exactly – over time it has all got mixed up in my head.

From Roshan to language designers of the future, on the topic of programming language types:

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

(adapted from Douglas Adams).

I just fixed the last bug!

Any sufficiently advanced bug, is indistinguishable from a feature.

-- quoting Prof Andrew Lumsdaine, Advanced Operating Systems (P536)

Marvin: "I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."

Zem: "Er, five."

Marvin: "Wrong. You see?"

The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind.

-- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

Life! Don't talk to me about life.

Ok, so what the answer?

Its 5,1,1,3,2…

No, no, no, I don’t like it..

You don’t like it?

It doesn’t mean anything, what does it mean?

Now that’s a different question.

-- solving the universe selection problem, Quantum Programming

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Would you like tea or coffee?

Mathematician: Yes.

-- quoting Michel Salim

What do you mean its third party fault? I can’t get my work done and you are partying?

It’s an idea so simple, that understanding it messes your mind.

-- adapted from Dan Friedman, Principles of Programming Languages

Creating a great language doesn’t involve assuming that your users are less smart than you.

The language that you use defines what you can most easily think of. Languages instill patterns of thought. Certain languages make difficult the understanding of certain ideas.

A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

-- AI Koan

Lambda the ultimate.

-- Dan Friedman

The only law in physics that we know of that has a direction with respect to time is that of entropy.

-- QP class, B629 Computer Science, Indiana University

Accept it. We are Labor.

A style makes explicit what a language makes implicit.

-- Dan Friedman

What I was coming to is that its something that cant be expressed in the lambda calculus.

But that’s obvious.

-- quoting Amr Sabry

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

-- Richard Feynman

This is not even wrong.

-- Amr Sabry

There exists no formal method to convert an informal argument into a formal one.

-- quoting Amr Sabry

There exists no reversible classical function that coverts a quantum superposition into a classical state.

-- above paraphrased by Roshan

Misguided rambling from Roshan: Computer Science to Physics and Back Again

There exists no formal method to convert an informal argument into a formal one. This is roughly equivalent to the second law of thermodynamics - the total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. This is also our only formal notion of the quantity called time. Here the law is rephrased as follows and things brings out its directional property with respect time, more clearly - It is not possible for heat to flow from a colder body to a warmer body without any work having been done to accomplish this flow. Energy will not flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a higher temperature object. This is roughly equivalent to saying that there is not no notion of a partial computation without a notion of sequencing with respect to time – this is the ‘.’ (dot) sequencing operator of the pi calculus. The lambda calculus does not define sequencing. Are all closed systems pi-systems?

Don’t worry, we are just playing games.

Summary of the known laws of the fictitious universe –

- There exists at least one notion of fundamental duality. Using this all other forms of duality can be derived.

- There exists at least one notion of self referential quantification. Using this all forms of self referential quantification can be derived.

- There exists an order of relationship of things among themselves. There exists an order of relationship of events among themselves. In other words there exists at least one notion of ordering or sequencing.

The Tao that can be described in words is not the true Tao

The Name that can be named is not the true Name.  

From non-existence were called Heaven and Earth

From existence all things were born.

In being without desires, you experience the wonder

But by having desires, you experience the journey.

Yet both spring from the same source and differ mostly in name.

This source is called "Mystery"

Mystery upon Mystery,

The womb giving birth to all of being. (1)

- Tao Te Ching, as translated by John R Mabry

All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions ...

Gödel showed that provability is a weaker notion than truth, no matter what axiom system is involved ...

- Gödel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter