<rindolf>  Hi all
 <rindolf>  sussman: here?
 <rindolf>  kfogel: here?
 <rindolf>  fitz: here?
 <rindolf>  Am I alone in the world?
 <rindolf>  Have everyone abandoned me?
 <rindolf>  Why doesn't anybody answer?
         *  rindolf starts to cry
 <sussman>  here
         *  rindolf stops crying
         *  rindolf hugs sussman
         *  rindolf whispers to him "I'm so glad you're back"

    -- #svn, Freenode

It's not true that those who can't do, teach (some of the best hackers I know
are professors), but it is true that there are a lot of things that those who
teach can't do. Research imposes constraining caste restrictions. In any
academic field there are topics that are ok to work on and others that aren't.
Unfortunately the distinction between acceptable and forbidden topics is
usually based on how intellectual the work sounds when described in research
papers, rather than how important it is for getting good results. The extreme
case is probably literature; people studying literature rarely say anything
that would be of the slightest use to those producing it.

Though the situation is better in the sciences, the overlap between the kind
of work you're allowed to do and the kind of work that yields good languages
is distressingly small. (Olin Shivers has grumbled eloquently about this.) For
example, types seem to be an inexhaustible source of research papers, despite
the fact that static typing seems to preclude true macros-- without which, in
my opinion, no language is worth using.

    -- Paul Graham
    -- "The Hundred-Year Language" ( http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html )