Fanciful Magic

Great Quote And Other Thoughts

"To attain knowledge, add things everyday;
to obtain wisdom, remove things everyday."
--Lao Tzu

A great quote for life and software design. It says what I tried to yesterday much more elegantly. It's amazing how often the theme of removal to gain is brought up. Perhaps we should learn how to reduce systems as well as build them! It was refreshing reading in the "Thinking Forth" book on how to reduce programs. It was amazing that the advice transcended language for the most part (removing conditionals and special cases, etc). Every language should have a "thinking" book. Lisp has one in Paul Graham's Advanced Lisp. Is there any more I need? Kent Becks Smalltalk Best Practices and the Smalltalk Design Patterns book come close for Smalltalk. I wonder if there is one for Prolog. They are fun reading and I always walking away with a different perspective to programming.