Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
[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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
I'm a programmer. I like programming. And the best way I've found to have a positive impact on code is to write it.
--Robert C. Martin
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
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom