“There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful--many more.”

—  Bjarne Stroustrup

The Problem with Programming (Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup), MIT Technology Review, November 28, 2006, Jason Pontin, 2007-11-15 http://technologyreview.com/Infotech/17831/page3/,

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful--many m…" by Bjarne Stroustrup?
Bjarne Stroustrup photo
Bjarne Stroustrup 30
Danish computer scientist, creator of C++ 1950

Related quotes

Jane Goodall photo

“They communicate, but their communication system is through touch, posture, looks – body language you could call it, but it goes a bit deeper than that. They can learn 400 or more signs in American sign language.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Wanderlust interview (2009)

“There can be no more solemn duty for the comparative linguist than to reconstruct his language family's word for the Supreme Being.”

James Matisoff (1937) linguist

"God and the Sino-Tibetan Copula" (1985) (p.4)

Niels Bohr photo

“I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

Remarks after the Solvay Conference (1927)
Context: I feel very much like Dirac: the idea of a personal God is foreign to me. But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science. True, we are inclined to think that science deals with information about objective facts, and poetry with subjective feelings. Hence we conclude that if religion does indeed deal with objective truths, it ought to adopt the same criteria of truth as science. But I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.

Edmund White photo

“Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 284).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Tennessee Williams photo

“The name of a person you love is more than language.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac photo

“The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

As quoted in Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry (trans. Robert Kerr, 1790), Preface, p. xiv.

Marcus Aurelius photo

“Doth perfect beauty stand in need of praise at all? Nay; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than loving kindness, nor than modesty.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IV, 20
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IV

Leopold II of Belgium photo

“If the knowledge of foreign languages is particularly useful in our time, that of national languages is a necessity. It is necessary to have them taught to the youth simultaneously, and it is to be desired that their use should become more and more common to all Belgians.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Source: J. Steur, Netherlands. Volume 63 Article from 1959. Quoted from J. Vuylsteke, "Flemish Belgium since 1830: Studies and sketches collected by the general board of the Willemsfonds on the occasion of the Jubilee Year 1905", Willemsfonds, 1905, p. 222. https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_nee003195901_01/_nee003195901_01_0114.php King Leopold II and the Queen are invited by the mayor of Brussels, Karel Buls, to attend the first performance in the renovated Flemish theatre, where he gives a speech in Flemish. This was followed by thunderous applause such as 'Long live our Flemish King!'

Caterina Davinio photo

“Making art means not only using languages, but also creating new ones. To do this, new tools are indispensable. Even returning to more traditional languages such as linear poetry or narration, after being enriched by the experience of hypertext, hypermedia and multimedia, allows us to rethink the older forms of expression and transfer the lessons of the new media into even the more traditional modalities of language, such as narrative, for example.”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 48

Fernando J. Corbató photo

“The use of the high level language made each programmer a factor of 5 to 10 more productive in a coding sense and more concerned with the semantics than the syntax of modules.”

Fernando J. Corbató (1926–2019) American computer scientist

"A Managerial View of the Multics System Development" (1978)

Related topics