But seriously….
One of the highlights was listening in on a small conversation last night, with Larry Wall (creator of Perl), Guido van Rossum (creator of Python) and Alexander Stepanov (creator of the C++ STL) all around the same table. Some notable quotes:
Larry Wall (when asked if he could do it all over again, what would he do differently):
“Usually the only answers to that question are ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’. I have always said ‘nothing’, but over the last year I’ve changed my answer.”
Alexander Stepanov commented (I didn’t write down the exact quote) that one of the worst things that has happened to software development in the last decade or so is commercialization. Computer “scientists” in college now are always looking to make the next big .com start-up or killer app that will make them rich. In this kind of environment, Stepanov says, scientific progress and imagination is almost completely stifled.