CodeQuotes » Art

Einstein: The mysterious

Neal Enssle — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:36:14 +0000

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

— Albert Einstein

Graham: Oil paint

Neal Enssle — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 11:19:04 +0000

“What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could make the finished work from the prototype. You could make a preliminary drawing if you wanted to, but you weren’t held to it; you could work out all the details, and even make major changes as you finished the painting. You can do this with software too. A prototype doesn’t have to be just a model; you can refine it into the finished product. [...] It’s good for morale.”

— P. Graham, Hackers and Painters

Gelernter: Good programmers

Neal Enssle — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:25:14 +0000

“Good programmers know what’s beautiful and bad ones don’t.”

— D. Gelernter, Machine Beauty

Gelernter: Beauty and complexity

Neal Enssle — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 12:03:03 +0000

“Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.”

— D. Gelernter, Machine Beauty

Picasso: Computers are useless

Neal Enssle — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:14:46 +0000

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”

— Pablo Picasso

Fuller: Beautiful Problems

Neal Enssle — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 13:15:37 +0000

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller