The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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.