Erik Naggum

1965–2009 · Norwegian computer programmer

Topics: programming, software design, software engineering, web development

• Elegance is necessarily unnatural, only achieveable at great expense. If you just do something, it won't be elegant, but if you do it and then see what might be more elegant, and do it again, you might, after an unknown number of iterations, get something that is very elegant.

  — Erik Naggum

• The novice-friendly software is more like a misbehaving dog: it shits on the floor, it destroys things, and stinks – the novice-friendly software embodies the opposite of what computer people have dreamed of for decades: artificial stupidity. It's more human.

  — Erik Naggum

• All experience has taught us that solving a complex problem uncovers hidden assumptions and ever more knowledge, trade-offs that we didn't anticipate but which can make the difference between meeting a deadline and going into research mode for a year, etc.

  — Erik Naggum

• Is it still "artificial intelligence" when the task is to model human stupidity, or would only preventing its devastating consequences get an "AI" rating?

  — Erik Naggum

• If you want to know why Lisp doesn't win around you, find a mirror.

  — Erik Naggum

• If Perl is the solution, you're solving the wrong problem.

  — Erik Naggum

• XML is a giant step in no direction at all.

  — Erik Naggum

• Computer programming is like the ability or skill to see what Picasso saw from all the different angles at once. If it is an art, the crucial element of art is to look at things from an angle that produces new insight or at least has that potential.

  — Erik Naggum

• Rewarding incompetence and ignorance increases the number of incompetent programmers. Designing programming languages and tools so incompetent programmers can feel better about themselves is not the way to go.

  — Erik Naggum

• A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.

  — Erik Naggum

• Structure is nothing if it is all you got. Skeletons spook people if they try to walk around on their own. I really wonder why XML does not.

  — Erik Naggum

• Life is too long to be good at C++ – if you had spent all that time to become good at it, you would essentially have to work with it, too, to get back the costs, and that would just be some long, drawn-out torture.

  — Erik Naggum

• If I sound grumpy, it is only because I have come across too many idiots of the "it can't be done" persuasion lately, the kind of managers who have an aquarium in their office because fifteen brains think better than one.

  — Erik Naggum

• The ultimate laziness is not using Perl. That saves you so much work you wouldn't believe it if you had never tried it.

  — Erik Naggum

• The Web provided me with a much needed realization that information cannot be fully separated from its presentation, and showed me something I knew without verbalizing explicitly, that the presentation form we choose communicates real information.

  — Erik Naggum

• What I actually admire in Perl is its ability to provide a very successful abstraction of the horrible mess that is collectively called Unix.

  — Erik Naggum

• Shed the idea that you were programming in an OO style. There is no such thing. You were only programming a particular object system. Now you get to program a different object system.

  — Erik Naggum

• Would you buy a book proudly stating on the cover that its reader is a dummy? Or would you think "of course it's ironic"?

  — Erik Naggum

• Gotos aren't damnable to begin with. If you aren't smart enough to distinguish what's bad about some gotos from all gotos, goto hell.

  — Erik Naggum

• The currency in the developer community is enthusiasm.

  — Erik Naggum