120 aphorisms on programming, written in 1982 and with many of them still surprisingly valid, some of which are:
8. A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
31. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
57. It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
74. Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble?
93. When someone says “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,” give him a lollipop.
98. In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
104. The proof of a system’s value is its existence.
105. You can’t communicate complexity, only an awareness of it.
…