Hal Abelson Quotes & Sayings

Congress is good at doing two things: one is nothing, and the other is overreacting. — Hal Abelson

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. — Hal Abelson

A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes. — Hal Abelson

Now the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments: when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use. — Hal Abelson

What's important is not just to develop the technology; it's to develop the processes. — Hal Abelson

We have also obtained a glimpse of another crucial idea about languages and program design. This is the approach of statified design, the notion that a complex system should be structured as a sequence of levels that are described using a sequence of languages. Each level is constructed by combining parts that are regarded as primitive at that level, and the parts constructed at each level are used as primitives at the next level. The language used at each level of a stratified design has primitives, means of combination, and means of abstraction appropriate to that level of detail. — Hal Abelson

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes ... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments. — Hal Abelson

There's a good part of Computer Science that's like magic. Unfortunately there's a bad part of Computer Science that's like religion. — Hal Abelson

Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization. — Hal Abelson

Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement. — Hal Abelson

The computer revolution is a revolution in the way we think and in the way we express what we think. — Hal Abelson

If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas. — Hal Abelson