College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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
[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
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
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.
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.