Laziness *is* a virtue

A former student of mine, Cynthia Hsu, had a friend IM me an interesting link (interesting for me)

One of the class mottos that I tried to use for my Computer Science classes for the two years was a phrase I tried to coin, "Laziness is a virtue". To the best of my knowledge, it's a phrase I came up with on my own. The link is neat because a VERY smart programmer, Larry Wall, also encourages laziness in the same way. In my case, I meant laziness in terms of getting the point of solving problems in the most efficient manner possible to expend the least amount of time and energy to arrive at a solution. Simple, short, elegant code that can be reused is a hall mark of the output of a very good programmer. It's also the hallmark of someone who can get projects done quicker which in theory allows for more leisure time. (coincidently these are not hallmarks associated with me, though I am lazy in other ways)

Anyways, it's neat having a smart person validate my usage of "laziness is a virtue"

The irritating thing though is I tried so hard to make sure I never taught anything of any real value!