Jamie Zawinski

Jamie Zawinski (JWZ; born November 3, 1968) is a computer programmer known for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser.

Attributed

 * Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
 * alt.religion.emacs (lost; recovered)

Quotes
Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment (also known as Zawinski's Law) relates the pressure of popularity to the phenomenon of software bloat:


 * Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
 * "Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment"
 * Commonly attributed to jwz, but "I didn't make that up"


 * The real bug here is that the design of the system even permits this class of bug. It is unconscionable that someone designing a critical piece of security infrastructure would design the system in such a way that it does not fail safe.
 * "" (About Ubuntu Bug)


 * You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.
 * "resignation and postmortem" (essay)


 * Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.
 * Quoted in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook, chapter 7: "The X-Windows Disaster"


 * I'd just like to take this moment to point out that C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.
 * XKeyCaps homepage


 * Linux is only free if your time has no value.
 * In an interview in June 1998; he later claimed that "Bits and pieces of this article have been quoted out of context in lots of places"


 * Today, I use Linux as my primary OS (on an x86 PC, and on a Thinkpad), and I also use Irix (on an SGI O2). Linux has improved a great deal since I wrote this, specifically with respect to its ease of installation.
 * In a comment on his site in 2000


 * Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?
 * "Groupware Bad" (essay)


 * My one purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
 * DNA Lounge blog


 * I dug in a bit but then the smell of gasoline and burning flesh drove me away.
 * DNA Lounge blog


 * If you're using Windows, go fuck yourself.
 * "Backups" essay


 * Don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school.
 * "don corleone" (essay)


 * C (it's not just a language, it's a grade)
 * alt.religion.emacs


 * I've noticed that when I get quoted in .sig files, it's never any of the actual clever things I say all the time. Usually it's something dumb.


 * Browser compatibility problems are nature's way of saying "stop trying to be so fuckin' clever".


 * Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.


 * [Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.


 * Your needs are big because the Internet is big.


 * Nothing comes for free.


 * These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are &hellip; something else entirely.


 * There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.


 * Our focus in the client group had always been to build products and features that people wanted to use. That we wanted to use. That our moms wanted to use.


 * If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.


 * But instead I'm stuck inside under fluorescent lights, pushing bits around inside a computer in ways that are only interesting to other nerds.

Quotes about Zawinski

 * One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.