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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.
--Larry Wall
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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
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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck