Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly possible, you are by definition not smart enough to debug it.
- Brian Kernighan
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.
Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgement difficult.
- Hippocrates (c. 400 B.C.)
from http://norvig.com/21-days.html
During his frequent visits to Thumba, Prof. Sarabhai would openly review the progress of work with the entire team. He never gave directions. Rather, through a free exchange of views, he led us forward into a new terrain which often revealed an unforseen solution. Perhaps he was aware that though a particular goal might be clear to himself, and he could give adequate directions for its accomplishment, his team might have resisted working towards a goal that made no sense to them. He considered the collective understanding of the problem the main attribute of effective leadership. He once told me, "Look, my job is to make decisions; but it is equally important to see to it that these decisions are accepted by my team members."
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, 'Wings of Fire'
... and these lines from a little-known poet of the nineteenth-century crossed my mind:
For all your days prepare
And meet them ever alike
When you are the anvil, bear -
When you are the hammer, strike.
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, 'Wings of Fire'
Anyone who has taken up the responsibility to lead a team can be successful only if he is sufficiently independent, powerful, and influential in his own right to become a person to reckon with. This perhaps also the path to individual satisfaction in life, for freedom with responsibility is the only sound basis for personal happiness. What can one do to strengthen personal freedom? I would like to share with you two techniques I adopt in this regard.
First, by building your own education and skills. Knowledge is a tangible asset, quite often the most important tool in your work. The more up-to-date the knownledge you possess, the freer you are. Knowledge cannot be taken away from anyone except by obsolescence. A leader can only be free to lead his team if he keeps abreast of all that is happening around him - in real time. To lead, in a way, is to engage in continuing education. In many countries, it is normal for professionals to go to college several nights every week. To be a successful team leader, one has to stay back after the din and clutter of a working day to emerge better-equipped and ready to face a new day.
The second way is to develop a passion for personal responsibility. The sovereign way to personal freedom is to help determine the forces that determine you. Be active! Take on responsibility! Work for things you believe in. If you do not, you are surrendering your fate to others. The historian Edith Hamilton wrote of ancient Greece, "When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsilibity, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again". The truth is that there is a great deal that most of us can individually do to increase our freedom. We can combat the forces that threaten to oppress us. We can fortify ourselves with the qualities and conditions that promote individual freedom. In doing so, we help to create a stronger organization, capable of achieving unprecedented goals.
- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, 'Wings of Fire'
The great art of learning is to understand but little at a time.
- John Locke
Unity does not have to be uniformity.
- Ravi Zacharias
“...WHILE dishes remain, DO wash next dish...”
- Ivan Sutherland
http://xkcd.com/137/
Ohhh! It's an earthquake. Hahaha! What an adventure!!!
- esok, on the day the earth shook, 2007
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
- Albert Einstein
This is nothing. This is nothing. Piece of cake, walk in the park. This is nothing.
- Stanley Moss, Dustin Hoffman's character in Wag The Dog
Then I realized: Oh my Gosh! I'm having a stroke. I'm having a stroke. And then the next thing my brain says to me is: Wow! This is so cool. This is so cool.
- Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/229
Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?
- Chuck Nolan, Tom Hanks' character in Cast Away, 2000
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
- Mark 8:36
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
- Rabindranath Tagore
The struggle between intellectualism and laziness .. An irresistable force vs an immovable object.
- Hari Menon
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselved about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbabale. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
- H. G. Wells, 'The War of the Worlds', opening paragraph
The root of the matter is so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics shall greet my words, the thing I mean is love or compassion, if you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a reason for courage and an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty
- geo, quotes roy quoting Bertrand Russell
The root of the matter is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it, for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words. The thing I mean - please forgive me for mentioning it - is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty. If you feel this, you have all that anybody should need in the way of religion. Although you may not find happiness, you will never know the deep despair of those whose life is aimless and void of purpose; for there is always something that you can do to diminish the awful sum of human misery.
- Bertrand Russell, 'The Impact of Science of Society'
One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness - simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
- George Sand
Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
Are you guys going to exploit me?
- pink, 2005
Normal is abnormal.
- esok
Abnormal is normal.
- corollary of above, esok
I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
I write.
- geo, when asked how he could list Literature as a hobby.
Home is where you don't have to pay for the food.
- chinku, 2001
Riders of the storm.
- besmircher
Time, money and health. Three things important in life. At no time will you have more than two of these.
- antonello
It is man's duty to appreciate beauty.
- esok
First his father left.
Then his brother left.
Now he has left.
Now only his mother is left.
- princi, this statement was the only silver lining in a dark episode
When you make a big investment, you should have comparably big patience.
- drinker in an alley off M. G. Road, 1999 as esok watches his brand new Sony Kirara Basso get wet in the rain while waiting for pv and the transportation
Muhuahahahaha... S@it
- pink, 2006
It is my 'deep'. It is my 'brilliant'. Bllathuthaduthadutha.
- esok, 2006
You connect me to the greatest happiness - and unhappiness - I have known.
- Julia, in Vikram Seth's An Equal Music
"With great power comes great responsibility." This is my gift, my curse.
- Spiderman
But it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.
- Batman Returns
I'm not gonna eat that.
- besmircher, about his taco shell, October 20, 2006
Give elephant, but do not give hope.
- Ana koduthaalum aasha kodokaruthe
Kuriakose is the best is Kuriakose.
- Dr. Jason Eisner, showing how 3-grams need not always yield correct sentences, 2006
Assumption is the mother of all f@#!ups.
- Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, 1995
The goal is wider than you think.
- esok
I feel the need ... the need for speed.
- Top Gun, 1986
If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.
- Proverbs 24:10
I made a promise. To the Lord. If he gives me the health, the strength, the life to do for them. Take care of them, keep them from going in a home. I would do it. And as long as he gives it to me, I will give it to them.
- Clarice Morant, on why at 101 she continues with the hard task of caregiving for her 95-year-old brother and 89-year-old sister. As told in 'Family Ties Source of Strength for Elderly Caregivers' by Joseph Shapiro http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282005
Whose side are you on - your side or my side?
- esok
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
- Henry Wordsworth Longfellow
There is tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyages of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current where it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring.
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare? -
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich the smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- William Henry Davies, Leisure
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost (1874-1963), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;
To earn the approbation of honest critics;
To appreciate beauty; to give of one's self;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived -
That is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
All men dream but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds
Wake in the day to find that it was vanity.
But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
For they may act on their dreams with open eyes,
To make it possible.
- T. E. Lawrence
It isn't the thing you do, dear;
It's the thing you leave undone,
That gives you a bit of heartache
At setting of the sun.
The stone you might have lifted
Out of a brother's way,
The bit of heartsome counsel
You were hurried too much to say;
Those little acts of kindness,
So easily out of mind;
Those chances to be angels
Which every one may find
They come in night and silence
Each chill, reproachful wraith
When hope is faint and flagging
And a blight has dropped on faith.
- Margret E. Sangster, The Sin of Omission