Aphorisms
My original quips. (At least I think they are original. The “words and gods” quip is the most suspect.)
Contents
Playlists
(Said in response to someone sharing an anti-work playlist.)
Every playlist is an anti-work playlist.
Everything
Actually, everything needs timeouts, exponential backoff, rate limiting, and usage quotas.
Poetry
Poetry is an early form of proof of work.
Manual memory management
Manual memory management, n.: The optimistic state of mind before you realize that sooner or later you will have to either abandon heap allocation altogether or implement reference counting.
Outsider art
If you say you are making outsider art, you probably aren’t.
Rat madness
A rationalist’s road to madness: between two maps of roughly equal probability choose the one that paints you as a worse person.
The brain
The brain is an inb4 machine.
Debugging
Debugging is applied pessimism.
Long timelines
On a long enough timeline, every story becomes cosmic horror.
Touch typing
Touch typing is a sign language.
Words
Words are weapons that subdue people. They can not subdue gods.
Social critics
Social critics are better at diagnosis than prescriptions.
Vigilance
(Re: “Should C be blamed for the Heartbleed bug?”)
Anything that requires constant vigilance is hard.