Hal Abelson Quotes

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

Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization.

[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.

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.

What’s important is not just to develop the technology; it’s to develop the processes.

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

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.