The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Along every step of our journey through life, our mind is being programmed. If we are not programming it ourselves, someone else is doing it to us.
--Joseph Rain
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
Our consciousness is programmed. We see things a certain way from a young age - we're programmed to keep doing them that way. Then you have to spend adulthood learning how to overcome it, to read out the programs. Try to create. I want to tell people to create. Just start by creating your day. Then create your life.
--Prince
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.
--Richard Stallman
But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti.
--Andrew Hunt
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles.
--Steven S. Skiena
The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly.
--Joe Armstrong
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
So if an algorithm is an idealized recipe, a program is the detailed set of instructions for a cooking robot preparing a month of meals for an army while under enemy attack
--Kernighan Brian
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin