Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2026 -- CSC 2700 Section 01
1216 Patrick Taylor Hall, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM



Class Home




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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
The real nightmare, worse than the one in which the Big Machine wants to kill you, is the one in which it sees you as irrelevant, or not even as a discrete thing to know.
--Benjamin H Bratton
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
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti.
--Andrew Hunt
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
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin 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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif