People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
--Alan J. Perlis
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
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
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
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
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck