The following table contains the names of 19 notable (and quotable) language creators, each paired with his or her most famous language creation. We’ve done that match-up for you. Your challenge is to match each notable quotable language creator with a quote.
Following the table you will find 19 quotes by these language creators. The third column of the table is for your convenience in solving the quiz. If you’ve printed it out, you can enter the number of the quote in that third column.
You will find, though, that things don’t quite match up. If you identify all the quotes, you will find two quotes by one author and no quote by a different author. The odd man (or woman) out is the ultimate answer to this month’s quiz: Which language creator is unrepresented by any quote?
Please do not confuse our quiz with this one: Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?
Language Creators and their Languages
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Language Creator |
Language(s) |
Quote |
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Dennis Ritchie |
C |
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Bjarne Stroustrup |
C++ |
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Grace Hopper |
COBOL |
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Bertrand Meyer |
Eiffel |
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Chuck Moore |
Forth |
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John Backus |
Fortran |
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Rob Pike |
Go |
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James Gosling |
Java |
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John McCarthy |
Lisp |
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Stephen Wolfram |
Mathematica |
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Tony Hoare |
CSP |
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Niklaus Wirth |
Pascal |
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Larry Wall |
Perl |
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Rasmus Lerdorf |
PHP |
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Guido van Rossum |
Python |
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Yukihiro Matsumoto |
Ruby |
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Alan Kay |
Smalltalk |
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David Farber |
Snobol |
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Alan Cooper |
Visual Basic |
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The Quotes
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“The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”
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“When the world becomes standard, I will start caring about standards.”
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“When I read commentary about suggestions for where [my language] should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn’t developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd.”
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“Don’t you hate code that’s not properly indented? Making it part of the syntax guarantees that all code is properly indented!”
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“I believe consistency and orthogonality are tools of design, not the primary goal in design.”
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“Our thirty year old belief that there is only one kind of computer is the basis for our belief that there is only one kind of programming language.”
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“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.”
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“No matter how cool your interface is, it would be better if there were less of it.”
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“As for our grandchildren, only the paleontology professors among them will know what C++ was.”
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“I invented the term ‘Object Oriented’ and I can tell you that I did not have C++ in mind.”
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“All processes, whether they are produced by human effort or occur spontaneously in nature, can be viewed as computations.”
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“You can have quality software, or you can have pointer arithmetic; but you cannot have both at the same time.”
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“Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.”
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“I am convinced that there is a need for high quality software, and the time will come when it will be recognized that it is worth investing effort in its development and in using a careful, structured approach based on safe, structured languages.”
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“All computer languages are write-only.”
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“Everyone needs computer programming. It will be the way we speak to the servants.”
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“I prefer to have as little as possible to do with Bertrand Meyer.”
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“It’s been a really weird summer.”
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“I could tell you stories that would curdle your hair.”
Last month we presented you with a Sudoku puzzle with a twist—it used letters instead of digits and hidden within it was the name of a kind of document sometimes written by software developers.
Solution to Last Month’s Quiz
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