When people ask me why I’m so fond of “computers”, I already answer that it’s like being able to build very large buildings or bridges, super-fast cars, etc without having to care about buying the raw material needed, or about the consequences: computers are like a giant Lego box which is only limited by the programmer’s abilities.

What I discovered today is that there’s a quote from Frederick P. Brooks that says about the same thing:

“The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.”