Bill Cowan
Director, Computer Graphics
Laboratory,
University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
E-mail: [wW][mM][cC][oO][wW][aA][nN] AT cgl DOT UWaterloo DOT ca
Telephone: 519.888.4567 x4527
I am a prof, which means that I do some research, some teaching, some administration, and some other stuff.
Address:
35 Courtland Avenue West,
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.Telephone: 519.744.4135.
Here's a map showing how to get to my house.
Object-orientation is the Roman numerals of programming. Rob Pike.
STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people.
Shared libraries are obviously a good idea until you've actually used them.
There is no problem in computer science that cannot be solved by another level of indirection - except performance.
C++ is to C as lung cancer is to lung.
Java is 100% buzz-word compliant.
Many familiar computing `concepts' are missing from UNIX. Files have no records. There are no access methods. User programs contain no system buffers. There are no file types. These concepts fill a much needed gap. Ken Thompson
The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren't there. Ken Thompson
Deletion is the most important tool of software design.
I was fortunate, however, to see some great mathematicians at work and became totally immune to a pseudo-mathematical rigor that unfortunately is so common in Computer Science.
The essence of XML is this: the problem it solves is not hard, and it does not solve the problem well.
It is written in GNU coding style, which hurts my eyes and brain.
Gnuemacs is portable, except to machines that are too small.
The MS programming motto, `Don't think; type!'
Re MS marketing: There's a reason for the funny names. If they don't include the word 'object' enough times, they'll lose their Tier 1 status in the buzzword hierarchy.
At any particular moment in the history of science, the most important and fruitful ideas are often lying dormant merely because they are unfashionable. Especially in mathematical physics, there is commonly a lag of fifty or a hundred years between the conception of a new idea and its emergence into the mainstream of scientific thought. If this is the time scale of fundamental advance, it follows that anybody doing fundamental work in mathematical physics is almost certain to be unfashionable. Freeman Dyson.
Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Rob Pike
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. Niklaus Wirth
Words on presentation slides are a very good idea, but only when the audience is deaf.
Modern academic life seems to me more and more like a Japanese car factory -- with scholarship that could just as well be produced by robots. John Sutherland.
An economist is someone who has had a human being described to him, but has never actually seen one.
Marshall on how to do & communicate research
(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than an engine of
inquiry.
(2) Keep to them till you have done.
(3) Translate into English.
(4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life.
(5) Burn the mathematics.
(6) If you can’t succeed in (4), burn (3).
This last I did often.
`Not only' out of place is like a tintack loose on the floor; it might have been most serviceable somewhere else, and is capable of giving acute and undeserved pain where it is. Fowler.
Les Francais goutent de la liberte comme de la liqueurs fortes avec lesquelles ils s'envirent.
We have now sunk to a level where restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
Anyhow, for what it's worth, I really would be surprised to find out that I was meant to be a hunter-gatherer since I don't feel the slightest nostalgia for that sort of life. I loathe the very idea of hunting, and I'm not all that keen on gathering either. Nor can I believe that living like a hunter-gatherer would make me happier or better. In fact, it sounds to me like absolute hell. No opera. And no plumbing. Jerry Fodor.
Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else. Boswell's Life of Johnson.
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider. Studs Turkle.
Re John Grisham. It is like reading toothpaste, but without the unbearable excitement. Sean O'Brien.
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Henry Ford.