Ken Thompson Professions : Computer Designer Born : February 4, 1943 Browse All Authors Top 44 quotes by Ken Thompson One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code. Ken Thompson great-day computer lines You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. Ken Thompson code programming trust If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there. Ken Thompson programming want way It's always good to take an orthogonal view of something. It develops ideas. Ken Thompson brilliant views ideas We have persistent objects, they're called files. Ken Thompson files persistent objects When in doubt, use brute force. Ken Thompson programming use doubt SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! Ken Thompson checks program humorous I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write. Ken Thompson simple writing thinking I don't think there are many people up in research who have strong ideas about things that they haven't really had experience with. Ken Thompson strong ideas thinking No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. Ken Thompson scrutiny source levels In fact, we started off with two or three different shells and the shell had life of its own. Ken Thompson different two facts The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you. Ken Thompson programming program server I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening. Ken Thompson gardening reading jobs A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect. Ken Thompson wells bugs impossible FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular. Ken Thompson three choices race The steady state of disks is full. Ken Thompson steady states humorous It is only the inadequacy of the criminal code that saves the hackers from very serious prosecution. Ken Thompson hackers criminals serious In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. Ken Thompson college games exercise I am a very bottom-up thinker. Ken Thompson bottom thinker There's a lot of power in executing data - generating data and executing data. Ken Thompson executing data power
