It Is Not The Task Of The

How Do We Convince People That In Programming Simplicity And Clarity - In Short: What Mathematicians Call Elegance - Are Not A Dispensable Luxury, But A Crucial Matter That Decides Between Success And Failure?

Lisp Has Jokingly Been Described As "the Most Intelligent Way To Misuse A Computer." I Think That Description Is A Great Compliment Because It Transmits The Full Flavour Of Liberation: It Has Assisted A Number Of Our Most Gifted Fellow Humans In Thinking Previously Impossible Thoughts.

The Effort Of Using Machines To Mimic The Human Mind Has Always Struck Me As Rather Silly. I Would Rather Use Them To Mimic Something Better.

...simplifications Have Had A Much Greater Long-range Scientific Impact Than Individual Feats Of Ingenuity. The Opportunity For Simplification Is Very Encouraging, Because In All Examples That Come To Mind The Simple And Elegant Systems Tend To Be Easier And Faster To Design And Get Right, More Efficient In Execution, And Much More Reliable Than The More Contrived Contraptions That Have To Be Debugged Into Some Degree Of Acceptability....simplicity And Elegance Are Unpopular Because They Require Hard Work And Discipline To Achieve And Education To Be Appreciated.

In Passing I Draw Attention To Another English Expression Which Often Occurs In Dutch Texts: "the Real World". In Dutch - And I Am Afraid Not In Dutch Alone - Its Usage Is Almost Always A Symptom Of A Violent Anti-intellectualism.