Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
So if an algorithm is an idealized recipe, a program is the detailed set of instructions for a cooking robot preparing a month of meals for an army while under enemy attack
--Kernighan Brian
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
[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
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
--Theodore H. White
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
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
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.
The real nightmare, worse than the one in which the Big Machine wants to kill you, is the one in which it sees you as irrelevant, or not even as a discrete thing to know.
--Benjamin H Bratton
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
|