“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff.

“He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

“Yet the program construct, unlike the poet’s words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms.

“The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be. …

“The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn’t work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, an few areas of human activity demand it.

“Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.”

From The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing — Alan Perlis

La idea, por su naturaleza misma, necesita ser comunicada: escrita,
explicada, realizada. Como la hierba, la idea busca la luz, ama las
multitudes, las cruzas la enriqueces, crece más vigorosa cuando se la pisa.

Ursula K. LeGuin, “Los desposeídos”

Si hubiera preguntado a mis clientes qué necesitaban, hubieran dicho un caballo mejor.

“Programming today is a race between software engineers
striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs,
and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the Universe is winning.”