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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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 best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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 most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown