Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.
--Larry Wall
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
--Rick Cook
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
--Theodore H. White
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
--Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay