“Bad ideas in computer science and anywhere are sticky. If the first idea was a bad idea, then because it works people will sort of repeat it.”
The How and Why of Fitting Things Together
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Joe Armstrong 36
British computer scientist 1950–2019Related quotes
New Scientist interview (2004)
“If there was ever a bad idea, EMU it is.”
Euro fantasies, 1996
“The systems approach is not a bad idea”
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 232
“The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad.”
Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."