Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Spring 2026 -- CSC 2700 Section 01
1218 Patrick Taylor Hall, 6:30 PM - 8:20 PM



Class Home




One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
...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
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
--Alan J. Perlis
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
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
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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.
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin