Eric S. Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond, often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, author of the widely cited 1997 essay and 1999 book The Cathedral and the Bazaar and other works, and open-source software advocate. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game NetHack. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, currently in print as the The New Hacker's Dictionary...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 December 1957
CountryUnited States of America
writing bridges simplicity
Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
eye bugs enough
With enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.
machines faces different
If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them.
memories management problem
The central problem of C and C++ is that they require programmers to do their own memory management
interesting problem programming
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
communication development coercion
Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
pain writing data
When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible - and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!
problem realizing programming
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
sugar language programming
When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
becoming treats programming
If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
debugging improvement programming
Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
absolute efficiency extract highest host operating possible systems tight written
Traditionally, operating systems had been written in tight assembler to extract the absolute highest efficiency possible out of their host machines.
becoming clear early effort ending ten unix
Worse, by the early 1990s it was becoming clear that ten years of effort to commercialize proprietary Unix was ending in failure.
built choosing examine facebook keeps using
As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of my choosing which are built for my needs?