Programming Habits in Python

Greg Jorgensen gregj at pobox.com
Mon Dec 11 01:15:07 EST 2000


The quote you are probably thinking of is from Samuel Johnson: "Sir, a
woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done
well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." Anything similar is a
derivative work. From Boswell's "Life of Johnson."


"Tres Seaver" <tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
news:682DDF8D24ABBCEB.7AA1428334F7B3A8.A771CF7758416C27 at lp.airnews.net...
> In article
<slrn937caf.h4.amk at 207-172-146-162.s162.tnt3.ann.va.dialup.rcn.com>,
> A.M. Kuchling <akuchlin at mems-exchange.org> wrote:
>
> >In the back of my mind I had a quotation, which I cannot track down on
> >the Web.  The Principia uses geometrical methods throughout, even
> >where analytical methods would have been much simpler, and someone
> >(Halley, perhaps) said that reading the Principia was like walking
> >through an arsenal of giant weapons of a past age, and that one is
> >amazed that anyone could wield them at all.
>
> I don't think it could be Halley;  he was actively involved (as the
> then secretary of the Royal Society) in getting the Principia published.
> It sounds a bit like an analogy my memory wants to attribute to
> Bertrand Russell:  "the amazing thing about a waltzing bear is not
> how well he waltzes, but that he waltzes at all."

--
Greg Jorgensen
Deschooling Society
Portland, Oregon, USA
gregj at pobox.com





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