The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.

Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding.

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.