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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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.
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
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
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
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
[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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler