John Backus Quotes

Take Lisp, you know its the most beautiful language in the world -- at least up until Haskell came along.

I didn't work hard to make Ruby perfect for everyone, because you feel differently from me. No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it's not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python.

I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining.

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either.

if you do not appreciate the mathematics, you cannot see, among the great variety of facts, that logic permits you to go from one to the other

What I knew was I liked math and science, and I never wanted to memorize everything. I wanted to understand where it came from.

Java the language is almost irrelevant. It's the design of the Java Virtual Machine. And I've seen compilers for ML, compilers for Scheme, compilers for Ada, and they all work. Not many people use them, but it doesn't matter: they all work.

SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

There's many scripting languages in the world, Perl is a little bit special because it is based more on some ideas from the way natural languages work.

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Mathematical Reasoning is not only exact; it has its own criteria of reality.

All science requires mathematics.

Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means.

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.

... mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose.

Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition.

Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

By freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence.

Science is a way of equipping yourself with the tools to interpret what happens in front of you.

A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you.

Not to know of what things one should demand demonstration, and of what one should not, argues want of education.

I can only insist that understanding, not blind belief, should be the goal.