Charles Petzold Quotes

'Programming' is a four-letter word.

I don't like creating software anymore. It's too exact. It's like karate; there's no room for error.

An algorithm must be seen to be believed.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

Golf is not easy.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

'PhotoCard' has 20 times as much code as the sum of 'QuickDraw,' 'MacPaint,' and 'HyperCard.' It is more elaborate and complicated, with all the client and server stuff. It took a lot more of me to do this than other projects, requiring an almost Mother Teresa dedication to do it.

The minute you're working with the government, you're dealing with bureaucracy, you're dealing with time lags, you're dealing with rigidity, you're dealing with a slow pace.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features and book-length manuals, and cars with dashboard systems worthy of the space shuttle.

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.

I started out with machine code and assembly language.

I wish I wasn't so technically challenged, because it puts you at a distinct disadvantage. I wish I could figure out a way to get more up to speed.

You can mass-produce hardware; you cannot mass-produce software - you cannot mass-produce the human mind.

Kids love robots. They're this fanciful, cool thing.

I had almost rewritten all of the display code for windows, and that was when I gave up.

My father taught me Basic and rudimentary C, I learned everything else on my own, including studying computational complexity on my own. That's more a function of my age than anything else though - back when I was in school there were hardly any programming classes.

The bureaucracy is what we all suffer from..

Getting the U. S. Government to do anything is like herding ducks with a broom.

I find it hard to put complicated situations clearly on paper and, to be brutally frank, even harder to get a reply from you in time to count much.

Computers in general, and software in particular, are much more difficult than other kinds of technology for most people to grok, and they overwhelm us with a sense of mystery.

If I don't understand something properly, every single component, it really bugs me.

I learned HTML in high school and then graduated to CSS. It's a great way to exercise my mind. But it's frustrating as hell.

Putting is a fascinating, aggravating, wonderful, terrible and almost incomprehensible part of the game of golf.

It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.