Bill Clementson's Blog

The Kenny Tilton CLL fortune file

Thursday, October 5, 2006

I've recently gotten tired of reading comp.lang.lisp as it doesn't seem to have the same "signal-to-noise" ratio that it used to nor does it have the same type of unique humour that it once did. However, I usually enjoy reading Kenny Tilton's posts. He often has something technically interesting to say and he usually does it with a mixture of seriousness and humour. Just recently, someone posted a collection of some of his more humourous quotes in the form of a fortune file:

Programmers who lock onto a design decision and cling to it in the face of
contradictory new information -- well, that's almost everyone in my
experience, so I better not say what I think of them or people will start
saying bad things about me on c.l.l.
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
This reminds me of the NYC cabby who accepted a fare to Chicago. When
they got there and could not find the friend who was supposed to pay the
fare he just laughed and said he should have known.
        -- Ken Tilton  
%
> Actually, I believe that Aikido, Jazz and Lisp are different appearances
> of the same thing.

Yes, the Tao. /Everything/ is a different appearance of the tao.
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
"Ken, I went to the library and read up on Buddhism, and believe me, you
are no Buddhist."
        -- Kenny's mom. 
%
That absolutely terrifies the herd-following, lockstep-marching,
mainstream-saluting cowards that obediently dash out or online to
scoop up books on The Latest Thing. They learn and use atrocities like
Java, C++, XML, and even Python for the security it gives them and
then sit there slaving away miserably, tediously, joylously paying off
mortgages and supporting ungrateful teenagers who despise them, only
to look out the double-sealed thermo-pane windows of their
central-heated, sound-proofed, dead-bolted, suffocating little nests
into the howling gale thinking "what do they know that I do not know?"
when they see us under a lean-to hunched over our laptops to shield
them from the rain laughing our asses off as we write great code
between bong hits.... what was the question?
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Shut up! (That last phrase has four or more syllables if pronounced as
intended.)
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Nonsense. You'll be using it for the GUI, not protein-folding.
        -- Ken Tilton 
                 (responding to a comment that LTK was slow because it
                  was based on TK)
%
Continuations certainly are clever, but if we learned anything from the
rejection of the cover art for "Smell the Glove", it is that "there is a
fine line between stupid... and clever".
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Ah, there's no place like academia for dispassionate, intellectually
honest discussion of new ideas on their merits. Thank god for tenure
giving your bold antagonist the protection they needed to shout down
your iconoclastic..... hang on...
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Whoever objected must be in my killfile, ...
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
From memory (but I think I have it right):

"But Jesus said, Suffer captured variables, and forbid them not, to come
unto thine macro bodies: for of such is are DSLs made."
        -- Ken Tilton 

Can I get an Amen?
%
Awareness of defect is the first step to recovery.
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
You made a bad analogy (there are no good ones, but you found a new
low) ...
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Yes, it is true that Kent Pitman was raised by a closet full of Lisp
Machines, but the exception only proves the rule.
        -- Ken Tilton 
                (in a postscript after positing that computer
                 languages are not learned in infancy)
%
I suggest you try bartender's school to support yourself, start
programming for fun again.
        -- Ken Tilton 
                (responding to a comment that 98% of anything to do
                 with computers was not interesting code)
%
You could add four lanes to my carpal tunnel and I still could not
write all the code I am dying to write.
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Neutrality? I want to bury other languages, not have a gateway to them.
        -- Ken Tilton 
%
Ken: "Cute puppy. Did you get it for companionship or to pick up chicks?"
Simon: "Hunh? My puppy /always/ gives me companionship."
        -- Ken Tilton 
                (on how he was understood by a native english speaker) 
%
Argument from analogy! I love these. they are just like... seedless grapes?
        -- Ken Titlon
%

Kenny Tilton  writes:
> >  Become
> > a celebrity like Kenny Tilton.

> I am a simple Lisp programmer.

> --

>   clinisys, inc
>   http://www.tilton-technology.com/
>   ---------------------------------------------------------------
> "I am a simple Buddhist monk.  "
>             --  Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

On top of everything else,  humble too! :-)

-- 
Fred Gilham