Bookmarks for passages / excerpts I come across that resonate with me, for whatever reason.

RAD has a small staff of really smart programmers that can code, write documentation, and provide great technical support. Unlike most companies, we want our smart people working on documentation and supporting our customers - that’s the way our products get better! After all, how would we know if the documentation needed clarification if we didn’t talk to the developers? How would we know if some API was too complicated without trying to walk someone through it over the phone? It is this circle of development (code->documentation->support->code) that we think makes our products unique. When you use our products, it should feel like an API that you designed yourself.

• RAD Gametools

“I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here… Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.”

• Hacker’s Manifesto

“Don’t only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.”

• Ludwig van Beethoven

“My first axiom is this: In a perfect world students pursue learning not because it is prescribed to them but rather out of a genuine desire to figure things out. We must therefore teach as if our students were of this kind. Only by aspiring to this ideal can we bring it closer to being realised.”

“My second axiom concerns the process of learning. It says: We learn when we are challenged, when we push ourselves. If you’re not stuck you’re not learning. If it’s not a struggle you’re not doing it right.”

“The final axiom of my teaching philosophy is that the goal of teaching is independent thought. We want students to be able to think and reason and apply what they know in new situations. We do not want to create robots or parrots or one-trick ponies.” - Intellectual Mathematics

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought. Seek the meaning behind their footsteps, and not upon the steps themselves. For in seeking the footsteps you shall be glancing only upon the next footprint. And you’re sure to stumble upon an unforeseen obstacle. But in seeking the meaning behind their footsteps you’re sure to see ahead; comparable to looking up while walking. Thus allowing you to easily manoeuvre around the hurdles on the path you walk. …And if you walk like this long enough, you’ll one day, to your surprise, find yourself among the wise.” - Matsuo Basho

“M: THe Way is a quality. A Quality of observation, keen discriminatoin, and interior examination. If you Wait, you will be a beggar who deserves nothing. If you Work, you will be a mule who attains nothing. You must seek to Understand, student. Understand the patterns of your life that have repeated themselves over and over again. And this understanding is borne of astute and incisive observation.And this astute and incisive observation is borne of Genuine Desire to be immune to all things that life has to offer. Most especially the “good” things.” - A Master’s Secret Whispers

“The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that’s incredibly powerful. Even so, for me, it’s about the products. It’s about working together with really fun, smart, creative people and making wonderful things. It’s not about the money. What a company is, then, is a group of people who can make more than just the next big thing. It’s a talent, it’s a capability, it’s a culture, it’s a point of view, and it’s a way of working together to make the next thing, and the next one, and the next one.” A talent, a capability, a culture, and a point of view: the Apple he was in the midst of re-creating would have all these things, as would the products it would create. -Becoming Steve Jobs

Most people are discontented, but they generally tame it by finding something which gives them satisfaction, and then they function mechanically and go to seed, or they become bitter, cynical, and so on. Is that what you are after?….You condemn the state you are in; your mind is opposing it. Discontent is a flame that must be kept burning brightly, and not be smothered by some interest or activity that is pursued as a reaction from the pain of it. Discontent is painful only when it is resisted. A man who is merely satisfied, without understanding the full significance of discontent, is asleep; he is not sensitive to the whole movement of life. Satisfaction is a drug, and it is comparatively easy to find. But to understand the full significance of discontent, the search for certainty must cease. -The Flame of Discontent

You know, in biology there is a phenomenon called the sport, which is a sudden and spontaneous deviation from the type. If you have a garden and have cultivated a particular species of flower, one morning you may find that something totally new has come out of that species. That new thing is called the sport. Being new it stands out, and the gardener takes a special interest in it. And life is like that. The moment you venture out, something takes place in you and about you. Life comes to your aid in various ways. You may not like the form in which it comes to you - it may be misery, struggle, starvation - but when you invite life, things begin to happen. -Think on These Things

Side by side, Jeff and Sanjay took charge of this effort. Wayne Rosing, who had worked at Apple on the precursor to the Macintosh, joined Google in November, 2000, to run its hundred-person engineering team. “They were the leaders,” he said. Working ninety-hour weeks, they wrote code so that a single hard drive could fail without bringing down the entire system. They added checkpoints to the crawling process so that it could be re-started midstream. By developing new encoding and compression schemes, they effectively doubled the system’s capacity. They were relentless optimizers. When a car goes around a turn, more ground must be covered by the outside wheels; likewise, the outer edge of a spinning hard disk moves faster than the inner one. Google had moved the most frequently accessed data to the outside, so that bits could flow faster under the read-head, but had left the inner half empty; Jeff and Sanjay used the space to store preprocessed data for common search queries. Over four days in 2001, they proved that Google’s index could be stored using fast random-access memory instead of relatively slow hard drives; the discovery reshaped the company’s economics. Page and Brin knew that users would flock to a service that delivered answers instantly. The problem was that speed required computing power, and computing power cost money. Jeff and Sanjay threaded the needle with software. -The Friendship that made Google huge

Sir, life is very strange. The moment you are very clear about what you want to do, things happen. Life comes to your aid - a friend, a relation, a teacher, a grandmother, somebody helps you. But if you are afraid to try because your father may turn you out, then you are lost. Life never comes to the aid of those who merely yield to some demand out of fear. But if you say, “This is what I really want to do and I am going to pursue it”, then you will find that something miraculous takes place. You may have to go hungry, struggle to get through, but you will be a worthwhile human being, not a mere copy, and that is the miracle of it. -Think on These Things

But things were changing. The businesses were maturing, and like other companies, GE was learning that it could not win simply by launching increasingly sophisticated technologies or by taking existing technologies to new markets. Some of its best-thought-out new offerings were fast becoming commodities. Even executives within a business like Aviation were having trouble making sense of a rapidly changing industry. Fuel prices were volatile; demand was slowing; stronger regulatory oversight was around the corner. How could the business remain competitive and also prosper? “We didn’t really know how to translate what we knew about customers into the next growth idea,” Gentile admits. -Unleashing the Power of Marketing

I am not talking of proficiency through effort and struggle, but of the love of doing something. But don’t battle against society, don’t tackle dead tradition, unless you have this love in you, for your struggle will be meaningless, and you will merely create more mischief. Whereas, if you deeply feel what is right and can therefore stand alone, then your action born of love will have extraordinary significance, it will have vitality, beauty. You know, it is only in a very quiet mind that great things are born; and a quiet mind does not come about through effort, through control, through discipline. -Think on These Things

What would it be like to be the sole possessor of total, infinite absolute control?  At first it seems as though it would be akin to being a god, at least as gods are normally conceived to be.  But what would one’s life be like under such circumstances. Suddenly it hit like a bolt of lightning!  It would be death.  Absolute, perfect control is in the coffin. -Dee Hock

Enormous subjects are best approached in thin, deep slices. I discovered this when first learning how to program. The textbooks never worked; it all only started to click when I started to do little projects for myself. The project wasn’t just motivation but an organizing principle, a magnet to arrange the random iron filings I picked up along the way. I’d care to learn about some abstract concept, like “memoization,” because I needed it to solve my problem; and these concepts would lose their abstractness in the light of my example. Biology is no different. Learning begins with questions. How do embryos differentiate? Why are my eyes blue? How does a hamster turn cheese into muscle? Why does the coronavirus make some people much sicker than others? -I should have loved Biology

If you believe that water can be extracted from a stone, you will spend your entire life chiseling away at that stone. -Atmamun

The person who asks me How to do sometihng is not serious. He is simply looking for solace. He is looking for someone to sympathize with his plight. He is lookig for someone to tell him that it is Okay that he did not spend his life exploring and discovering the talents that nature bestowed upon him. -Atmamun

When I travel…I am watching how a society, an administration, is functioning. Why are they good?…And the ideas come from not just reading. You can read about it, but it is irrelevant if you do not relate it to yourself… which I constantly do…You must not overlook the importance of discussions with knowledgeable people. I would say that is much more productive than absorbing or running through masses of documents. Because in a short exchange, you can abstract from somebody who has immense knowledge and experience the essence of what he had gained. -The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

The final corroboration of logic and reasoning comes when they become practical realities. The acid test is in performance, not promises. The millions of dispossessed in Asia care not and know not of theory. They want a better life. They want a more equal, just society. Good sense and good economics require that we must always find practical, not doctrinaire, solutions to our problems of growth and development. -The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

What I want to discuss is the importance of simple, clear, written English. This is not simple…Arthur Koestler rightly pointed out that if Hitler’s speeches had been written, not spoken, the Germans would never have gone to war…When you send me or send your minister a minute or a memo, or a draft that has to be published like the president’s address, do not try to impress by big words. Impress by the clarity of your ideas…I speak as a practitioner. If I had not been able to reduce complex ideas into simple words and project them vividly for mass understanding, I would not be here today. -The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

Every technological advance must be framed in a beguiling narrative if it’s to get off the workbench and into businesses or homes. These advances often are foreign concepts, after all, with potential that seems opaque if not daunting, so the job of a great marketer is to wrestle the concept back to earth and make it approachable for mere technophobic mortals. -Becoming Steve Jobs

“I watched Bob Dylan as I was growing up, and I watched him never stand still ,” Steve would tell me about a year later, in a circuitous attempt to explain why he finally dived back into Apple. “If you look at true artists, if they get really good at something, it occurs to them that they can do this for the rest of their lives, and they can be really successful at it to the outside world, but not really successful to themselves. That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure. -Becoming Steve Jobs

Learning about new technologies and markets is what makes this fun for me and for everyone at Apple. -Becoming Steve Jobs

Developing a new interface is one of the most deceptively difficult technological challenges in computer science. It isn’t simply a matter of designing some delightful new way to present images of information on a computer. It’s just as much a matter of reckoning with—and not simply discarding—past habits. -Becoming Steve Jobs