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"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it." -Attribution unknown because the interwebz say
by keithwarren 14y ago
"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it."
-Attribution unknown because the interwebz say several people said it.
- woodchuck64 14y agoLazy people cut corners, and then lie about cutting corners. After you've spent time and money discovering the missing corner cases, lazy people admit that that they made a mistake, but you're assured that they'll do better next time. Begin paragraph again.
- DennisP 14y agoLazy/honest people. As Larry Wall says, laziness is one of the great virtues of a programmer. "I was so lazy I invented Perl." His definition: "The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it." http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/
- stcredzero 14y agoOne of my professors called this "active lazy."
- maxerickson 14y agoI'm pretty lazy, but I'm not irresponsible in regards to my obligations to others. Really, what I'm saying here is that you are just insisting that your definition of lazy is the only correct one.
- yen223 14y agoLaziness in itself is not a virtue. When programmers say we want 'lazy' people, what we really want are 'efficient' people. People who can get more stuff done with less effort, not people who aren't even willing to put in that effort. Some would argue that lazy people will find ways to do more for less; I would argue that a smart, hardworking person will do the same. In that sense, lazy people are like what woodchuck64 describes.
- maxerickson 14y agoYou are doing the same thing as woodchuck64. The meaning in keithwarren's comment is clear enough, right up until the point you over-parse it and quibble over the exact definition of lazy.
- DennisP 14y agoMy brother's an officer in the Navy, and just told me about a book he's reading about a German general, I think from WWII. He classified his staff into four categories, and treated them accordingly: Stupid/Lazy: harmless. Keep around doing whatever you can get them to do. Stupid/Energetic: fire immediately before they do damage. Smart/Energetic: useful, give them lots of middle-management work. Smart/Lazy: put in high-ranking positions, they'll find efficiencies that will trickle down to everyone. I'll ask him the source and post it later.
- znt 14y agoI think this general may be Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox.
- deckchain 14y agoMaking war and making software are very different.
- c0nfused 14y agoSome of us are either making software about war or warring about making software. So, it all works out in the end.
- DennisP 14y agoAs far as these categories are concerned I think they're exactly the same. Only difference is that in a commercial environment you don't want to waste much money on dumb/lazy people, unless you've got enough menial work that you can't automate.
- arethuza 14y agoI think it might have originally been the Prussian Field Marshall von Moltke: http://old-soldier-colonel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/field-marshal-moltkes-four-types-of.html http://old-soldier-colonel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/field-mars...
- DennisP 14y ago
- MertsA 14y agoI've always heard that was from Bill Gates.
- dandrews 14y agoThis sounds like Heinlein's "man who was too lazy to fail".
- kamjam 14y ago“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” - Robert A. Heinlein