Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
[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
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
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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