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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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 not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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
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
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
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
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.
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw