Other famous statements, similar to the ones in this essay:
* Go is an easy game to learn; the rules fit on one page.
* Sculpting is easy: To make a statue of a lion, just start with a block of marble and take away all the bits that don't look like a lion.
* Here's a T-shirt with Maxwell's Equations. Now you understand classical electrodynamics.
* That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.
I'm not saying that the essay isn't true. It is true. But learning the first-order approximation to truth is, at most, half the pleasure. Learning the details is the other half.
Sure: but part of the point of the essay is that certain languages (Lisp, Assembly) are so spare (and bare) that the simplicity of the complexity (and the complexity of the simplicity) are more readily visible.
* Go is an easy game to learn; the rules fit on one page.
* Sculpting is easy: To make a statue of a lion, just start with a block of marble and take away all the bits that don't look like a lion.
* Here's a T-shirt with Maxwell's Equations. Now you understand classical electrodynamics.
* That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.
I'm not saying that the essay isn't true. It is true. But learning the first-order approximation to truth is, at most, half the pleasure. Learning the details is the other half.