To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

H. Pointcaré

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Beautifull

Inspiring: http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

That sentiment is often echoed by some of the pop heroes of the geek world. Raganwald comes to mind.

• Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems – Jamie Zawinski

• Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. – Rick Osborne
• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ – Isaac Asimov
• There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult

- Conficius

(I loved the quote. As seen in Up the Yangtze)

So lets drop this obsession with learning to say “hello world” (or some more complicated version of essentially the same) in every programming language one can name.

(On a seperate note, this comment explains why I always question the value of blog comments … Granted, the guy is either a) mentally retarded or b) flamebaiting.)