15 Quotes by Marijn Haverbeke

Learning is hard work, but everything you learn is yours and will make subsequent learning easier.

Below the surface of the machine, the program moves. Without effort, it expands and contracts. In great harmony, electrons scatter and regroup. The forms on the monitor are but ripples on the water. The essence stays invisibly below. – Master Yuan-Ma, The Book of Programming.

The best way to learn the value of good interface design is to use lots of interfaces – some good, some bad. Experience will teach you what works and what doesn’t. Never assume that a painful interface is “just the way it is.” Fix it, or wrap it in.

How difficult it is to find a good name for a function is a good indication of how clear a concept it is that.

You should imagine variables as tentacles, rather than boxes. They do not contain values; they grasp them – two variables can refer to the same value.

Functions that create values are easier to combine in new ways than functions that directly perform side effects.