Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
[On identifying talented programmers] It’s just enthusiasm. You ask them what’s the most interesting program they worked on. And then you get them to describe it and its algorithms and what’s going on. If they can’t withstand my questioning on their program, then they’re not good. I’m asking them to describe something they’ve done that they’ve spent blood on. I’ve never met anybody who really did spend blood on something who wasn’t eager to describe what they’ve done and how they did it and why. I let them pick the subject. I don’t pick the subject, so I’m the amateur and they’re the professional in this subject. If they can’t stand an amateur asking them questions about their profession, then they don’t belong.
--Ken Thompson
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
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.
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
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
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi