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Comment by HeXetic | Hacker News Reader

  Some people, when confronted with a problem,
  think "I know, I'll use regular expressions."
  Now they have two problems.
  - Jamie Zawinski

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"There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all."

- Nietzsche

Just so you know, jwz is not the original source of this quote, it's much older: http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247

Your reference link literally says that Jamie Zawinski is the originator of the quote.

You must not have finished reading. He originated the version that says "regular expressions", but not the "two problems" part or the sentiment about textmatching:

>As cute as the “now you have two problems” quote is, it seems that Jamie wasn't the first to come up with the idea. The same quote (but with AWK rather than regular expressions as the punch line) shows up in the sig of John Myers post from 1988, where he credits a “D. Tilbrook” for it:

“Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use AWK.' Now, they have two problems.” -- D. Tilbrook

But, to be fair, that's not the same quote. jwz was paraphrasing Tilbrook on awk, but the new utterance about regular expressions was his own.

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