Jorge Luis Borges on novice writers (or programmers?)

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Look, I mean to say this: When I began writing, I thought that
 everything should be defined by the writer. For example, to say
 “the moon” was strictly forbidden; that one had to find an
 adjective, an epithet for the moon. (Of course, I'm simplifying
 things. I know it because many times I have written “la luna,”
 but this is a kind of symbol of what I was doing.) Well, I
 thought everything had to be defined and that no common turns
 of phrase should be used. I would never have said, “So-and-so
 came in and sat down,” because that was far too simple and far
 too easy. I thought I had to find out some fancy way of saying
 it. Now I find out that those things are generally annoyances to
 the reader. But I think the whole root of the matter lies in the
 fact that when a writer is young he feels somehow that what he
 is going to say is rather silly or obvious or commonplace, and
 then he tries to hide it under baroque ornament, under words
 taken from the seventeenth-century writers; or, if not, and he
 sets out to be modern, then he does the contrary: He's inventing
 words all the time, or alluding to airplanes, railway trains, or
 the telegraph and telephone because he's doing his best to be
 modern. Then as time goes on, one feels that one's ideas, good or
 bad, should be plainly expressed, because if you have an idea you
 must try to get that idea or that feeling or that mood into the
 mind of the reader. If, at the same time, you are trying to be,
 let's say, Sir Thomas Browne or Ezra Pound, then it can't be done.
 So that I think a writer always begins by being too complicated:
 He's playing at several games at the same time. He wants to convey
 a peculiar mood; at the same time he must be a contemporary and if
 not a contemporary, then he's a reactionary and a classic. As to
 the vocabulary, the first thing a young writer, at least in this
 country, sets out to do is to show his readers that he possesses a
 dictionary, that he knows all the synonyms; so we get, for example,
 in one line, red, then we get scarlet, then we get other different
 words, more or less, for the same color: purple.

Cortázar: "Descender o bajar, la cuestión es que el personaje se largó escalera abajo y se acabó." (Rayuela) :-)

Yep. Same goes for music. When I began playing I thought notes / minute was the most important thing.

It was much later that I understood B.B. King, for instance; who can say A LOT with just a single note.

BTW, Borges is a perfect writer for programmers. Full of paradoxes.

@marcioendo Oh, I wish I understood BBK.
If you're into sciences/technology and haven't read JLB, you're loosing big moments of placer. Cortázar is great too.

@mausch Qué buena página! Me preparo para leerla más tranquilo esta noche, Readability en mano. Rayuela es un libro que por algún motivo nunca me sedujo, talvez por los malabares, o no sé por qué. Talvez esto elimine mi prejuicio.

@paraseba A mí por el contrario, nunca me atrajo del todo Borges. Pero uno cambia con los años, y creo que es momento de que lo relea...

@mausch Borges es poco atractivo por alguna de sus ideas, sobre todo políticas y sociales. Pero su literatura y su genio, al menos para mí, están muy por encima de esas ideas.

Esto ya parece un chat...

I read JLB during my college years. The Aleph and The Book of Sand.

Though I should probably re-read them. I don't remember much. Only this:

'all beings are immortal because they don't think about death, except the human being. the real thing is to know you ARE immortal'

or something among those lines...