# Jamie Zawinski

Jamie Zawinski (JWZ; born November 3, 1968) is a computer programmer known for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser.

## Quotes

* Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.
** alt.religion.emacs (lost; recovered; originally an adaptation of a similar quote by David Tilbrook)
Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment (also known as Zawinski's Law) relates the pressure of popularity to the phenomenon of software bloat:
* Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
** "Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment"
** Commonly attributed to jwz, but "I didn't make that up"
* The real bug here is that the design of the system even permits this class of bug. It is unconscionable that someone designing a critical piece of security infrastructure would design the system in such a way that it does not fail safe.
** "" (About Ubuntu Bug)
* You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.
** "resignation and postmortem" (essay)
* Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.
** Quoted in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook, chapter 7: "The X-Windows Disaster"
* I'd just like to take this moment to point out that C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.
** XKeyCaps homepage
* Linux is only free if your time has no value.
** In an interview in June 1998; he later claimed that "Bits and pieces of this article have been quoted out of context in lots of places"
* Today, I use Linux as my primary OS (on an x86 PC, and on a Thinkpad), and I also use Irix (on an SGI O2). Linux has improved a great deal since I wrote this, specifically with respect to its ease of installation.
** In a comment on his site in 2000
* Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?
** "Groupware Bad" (essay)
* My one purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others.
** DNA Lounge blog
* I dug in a bit but then the smell of gasoline and burning flesh drove me away.
** DNA Lounge blog
* If you're using Windows, go fuck yourself.
** "Backups" essay
* Don't do drugs, kids. Stay in school.
** "don corleone" (essay)
* C (it's not just a language, it's a grade)
** alt.religion.emacs
* I've noticed that when I get quoted in .sig files, it's never any of the actual clever things I say all the time. Usually it's something dumb.
** DNA quotes, Inkee .
* Browser compatibility problems are nature's way of saying "stop trying to be so fuckin' clever".
** DNA quotes, Inkee .
* Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.
** "Signatures", Texts, RU: PP .
* [Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.
** Groups, Google .
* Your needs are big because the Internet is big.
** Easter eggs, JWZ .
* Nothing comes for free.
** Easter eggs, JWZ .
* These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are … something else entirely.
** Markup, JWZ .
* There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.
** IWTBF, JWZ .
* Our focus in the client group had always been to build products and features that people wanted to use. That we wanted to use. That our moms wanted to use.
** Groupware, JWZ .
* If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.
** Groupware, JWZ .
* But instead I'm stuck inside under fluorescent lights, pushing bits around inside a computer in ways that are only interesting to other nerds.
** NSCP Dorm, JWZ .

## Quotes about Zawinski

* One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.
** Norvig, Peter (2001). Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years.

## External links

* Personal homepage