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Armstrong: Yes. Why this is I don't know. The funny thing is, if you give two programmers the same problem—it depends on the problem, but problems of a more mathematical nature, they can often end up writing the same code. Subject to just formatting issues and relabeling the variables and the funct…

Armstrong: Well, as an undergraduate some of the courses involved writing programs and I really enjoyed that. And I got to be very good at debugging. If all else failed, I would debug people's programs. The standard debugging was one beer. Then it would go up—a two-beer problem or a three-beer prob…

Seibel: Speaking of writing intricate code, I've noticed that people who are too smart, in a certain dimension anyway, make the worst code. Because they can actually fit the whole thing in their head they can write these great reams of spaghetti code.

Bloch: I agree with you that people who are …

Eich: [...] But it was definitely painful and it takes too long. As Oscar Wilde said of socialism, “It takes too many evenings.”

Seibel: You said earlier that you got into computers because you thought they would make the world a better place.
Crockford: That's my intention.

Seibel: How's that working out?

Crockford: For the most part, we've done pretty good. I think the world is a better place, although it's not alwa…