Butler Lampson Quotes

Bravo text editor, probably the most popular single application ever written for the Alto. Designed by Butler Lampson and Charles Simonyi, and then developed further by Simonyi and others, Bravo introduced What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get word processing: WYSIWYG.

A brute-force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work. It can take a long time to get an elegant solution to work. In describing the history of searching algorithms, for example, Donald Knuth pointed out that even though the first description of a binary search algorithm was published in 1946, it took another 16 years for someone to publish an algorithm that correctly searched lists of all sizes (Knuth 1998). A binary search is more elegant, but a brute-force, sequential search is often sufficient. When in doubt, use brute force. — Butler Lampson

If Xerox had asked Butler Lampson, Chuck Thacker, and their colleagues to design a cost-reduced, market-ready computer system, the people who had invented the technology in the first place stood ready to provide it.