Lester del Rey quote: “The present molders of the code seemed to have a clear knowledge of just how difficult to make something, to add to its…”

“When you find you have to add a feature to a program, and the program's code is not structured in a convenient way to add the feature, first refactor the program to make it easy to add the feature, then add the feature.”

Martin Fowler (1963) British programmer

Source: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999, p. 7

“When you find you have to add a feature to a program, and the program's code is not structured in a convenient way to add the feature, first refactor the program to make it easy to add the feature, then add the feature.”

Kent Beck (1961) software engineer

Source: Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999, p. 7

“It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form.”

Paul Dirac (1902–1984) theoretical physicist

"The Early Years of Relativity" in Albert Einstein : Historical and Cultural Perspectives : The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem (1979) edited by Gerald James Holton and Yehuda Elkana, p. 85
Context: It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form. Some further changes will be needed, just about as drastic as the changes made in passing from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. Some day a new quantum mechanics, a relativistic one, will be discovered, in which we will not have these infinities occurring at all. It might very well be that the new quantum mechanics will have determinism in the way that Einstein wanted.

“It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”

Bertrand Russell book Sceptical Essays

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda http://books.google.com/books?id=9tQsg5ITfHsC&q="It+is+clear+that+thought+is+not+free+if+the+profession+of+certain+opinions+makes+it+impossible+to+earn+a+living"&pg=PA126#v=onepage

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“You see, some people have a talent for programming. At ten to thirteen years old, typically, they're fascinated, and if they use a program, they want to know: “How does it do this?” But when they ask the teacher, if it's proprietary, the teacher has to say: “I'm sorry, it's a secret, we can't find out.” Which means education is forbidden. A proprietary program is the enemy of the spirit of education. It's knowledge withheld, so it should not be tolerated in a school, even though there may be plenty of people in the school who don't care about programming, don't want to learn this. Still, because it's the enemy of the spirit of education, it shouldn't be there in the school.
But if the program is free, the teacher can explain what he knows, and then give out copies of the source code, saying: “Read it and you'll understand everything.” And those who are really fascinated, they will read it! And this gives them an opportunity to start to learn how to be good programmers.
To learn to be a good programmer, you'll need to recognize that certain ways of writing code, even if they make sense to you and they are correct, they're not good because other people will have trouble understanding them. Good code is clear code that others will have an easy time working on when they need to make further changes.
How do you learn to write good clear code? You do it by reading lots of code, and writing lots of code. Well, only free software offers the chance to read the code of large programs that we really use. And then you have to write lots of code, which means you have to write changes in large programs.
How do you learn to write good code for the large programs? You have to start small, which does not mean small program, oh no! The challenges of the code for large programs don't even begin to appear in small programs. So the way you start small at writing code for large programs is by writing small changes in large programs. And only free software gives you the chance to do that.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

A Free Digital Society - What Makes Digital Inclusion Good or Bad? http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-digital-society.html#education; Lecture at Sciences Po in Paris (19 October 2011)]
2010s

“Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Speech to the House of Commons (January 29, 1828).

“Be free. Don't just make freedom something you have, make it something you do … something you ARE!”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 156
Context: The best way to celebrate your freedom is to LIVE it! Be you. Be free. Don't just make freedom something you have, make it something you do... something you ARE!

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Variant: ... and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
Source: Fight Club

“To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we’re polymaths. That’s just the act of all good writing.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

“The present molders of the code seemed to have a clear knowledge of just how difficult to make something, to add to its fascination, without making it impossible.”

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Lester del Rey 10

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