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
You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.
--Cory Althoff
I'm a programmer. I like programming. And the best way I've found to have a positive impact on code is to write it.
--Robert C. Martin
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Managers of programming projects aren’t always aware that certain programming issues are matters of religion. If you’re a manager and you try to require compliance with certain programming practices, you’re inviting your programmers’ ire. Here’s a list of religious issues:
■ Programming language
■ Indentation style
■ Placing of braces
■ Choice of IDE
■ Commenting style
■ Efficiency vs. readability tradeoffs
■ Choice of methodology—for example, Scrum vs. Extreme Programming vs. evolutionary delivery ■ Programming utilities
■ Naming conventions
■ Use of gotos
■ Use of global variables
■ Measurements, especially productivity measures such as lines of code per day
--Steve McConnell
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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.
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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--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