“Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”

—  John Backus

Quoted in the IBM employee magazine Think in 1979. Cited by his Associated Press obituary http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17704662/

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 "Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an…" by John Backus?
John Backus photo
John Backus 4
American computer scientist 1924–2007

Related quotes

Doug McIlroy photo

“This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.”

Doug McIlroy (1932) American computer scientist, mathematician, engineer, and programmer

Doug McIlroy (2003). The Art of Unix Programming: Basics of the Unix Philosophy http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html

Bill Gates photo

“The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Interview from Programmers at Work (1986)

Seymour Papert photo

“Should the computer program the kid or should the kid program the computer?”

Seymour Papert (1928–2016) MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator

Spacewar http://wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html ROLLING STONE · 7 DECEMBER 1972

Richard Dawkins photo

“In fact writing a computer program is a pretty good way to summarize knowledge about any set of rules.”

Richard Dawkins book Climbing Mount Improbable

Source: Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Chapter 2, “Silken Fetters” (p. 58)

Isaac Asimov photo

“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Donald A. Norman photo

“Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.”

Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things

Source: The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002), Ch. 6, p. 180.

Philip Rosedale photo

“I started doing electronics when I was a little kid, in the 5th or 6th grade, buying computer parts at a swap meet and writing my first programs. Simple things just blew my mind with respect to the sort of infinite simulation or combinatorial possibility inside the computer. My personal obsession from my childhood was that I just wanted to recreate reality inside the computer and then go in there.”

Philip Rosedale (1968) American businessman, founder of Second Life

Source: Peter Diamandis. " Second Life: How a Virtual World Became a Reality http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-diamandis/second-life-how-a-virtual_b_2831270.html," at huffingtonpost.com, 03/07/2013.

Kenneth E. Iverson photo

“Overemphasis of efficiency leads to an unfortunate circularity in design: for reasons of efficiency early programming languages reflected the characteristics of the early computers, and each generation of computers reflects the needs of the programming languages of the preceding generation.”

Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004) Canadian computer scientist

§5.4
Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

“So? If you don't like it, write your own [program].”

Paul DiLascia (1959–2008) American software developer

1995/10
About Code

Ward Cunningham photo

“If you write a lot of programs, and you're used to squeezing them all the time, you find that it's easy to write a program that's simple. A lot of it is having a clear sense of what you want to say — writing the proof by choosing what to prove, and being clear about that. In programming, a lot of simplicity comes from knowing what matters and what doesn't matter.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

Related topics