Top 7 Quotes & Sayings by Leslie Lamport

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American scientist Leslie Lamport.
Last updated on November 10, 2024.
Leslie Lamport

Leslie B. Lamport is an American computer scientist. Lamport is best known for his seminal work in distributed systems, and as the initial developer of the document preparation system LaTeX and the author of its first manual. Lamport was the winner of the 2013 Turing Award for imposing clear, well-defined coherence on the seemingly chaotic behavior of distributed computing systems, in which several autonomous computers communicate with each other by passing messages. He devised important algorithms and developed formal modeling and verification protocols that improve the quality of real distributed systems. These contributions have resulted in improved correctness, performance, and reliability of computer systems.

When I write a paper, I change my notation much more than I change my concepts.
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
Thinking doesn't guarantee that we won't make mistakes. But not thinking guarantees that we will. — © Leslie Lamport
Thinking doesn't guarantee that we won't make mistakes. But not thinking guarantees that we will.
Thinking is not the ability to manipulate language; it’s the ability to manipulate concepts.
"Sometimes" is sometimes "not never".
There is a race between the increasing complexity of the systems we build and our ability to develop intellectual tools for understanding their complexity. If the race is won by our tools, then systems will eventually become easier to use and more reliable. If not, they will continue to become harder to use and less reliable for all but a relatively small set of common tasks. Given how hard thinking is, if those intellectual tools are to succeed, they will have to substitute calculation for thought.
Formatting is no substitute for writing.
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