For most of that time, I've also been a keen gardener, but for many years I failed to make the connection between gardening and science. Ken Thompson More Quotes by Ken Thompson More Quotes From Ken Thompson One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code. Ken Thompson great-daycomputerlines You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. Ken Thompson codeprogrammingtrust If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there. Ken Thompson programmingwantway It's always good to take an orthogonal view of something. It develops ideas. Ken Thompson brilliantviewsideas We have persistent objects, they're called files. Ken Thompson filespersistentobjects When in doubt, use brute force. Ken Thompson programmingusedoubt SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! Ken Thompson checksprogramhumorous I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write. Ken Thompson simplewritingthinking 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 strongideasthinking No amount of source-level verification or scrutiny will protect you from using untrusted code. Ken Thompson scrutinysourcelevels In fact, we started off with two or three different shells and the shell had life of its own. Ken Thompson differenttwofacts The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you. Ken Thompson programmingprogramserver 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 gardeningreadingjobs A well installed microcode bug will be almost impossible to detect. Ken Thompson wellsbugsimpossible FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular. Ken Thompson threechoicesrace The steady state of disks is full. Ken Thompson steadystateshumorous It is only the inadequacy of the criminal code that saves the hackers from very serious prosecution. Ken Thompson hackerscriminalsserious In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. Ken Thompson collegegamesexercise I am a very bottom-up thinker. Ken Thompson bottomthinker There's a lot of power in executing data - generating data and executing data. Ken Thompson executingdatapower
