Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. 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 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 Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability. --George Bernard Shaw What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time? --James Alan Gardner Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander 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. --Martin Fowler There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison 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 That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. --Paul Graham Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out. --Chris Pine [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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines. --Steve McConnell College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility. --Dennis Miller Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. --Louis Srygley Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live --John Woods The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly. --Joe Armstrong Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. --Alan Kay What is a university/college when the students lose interest? --Isaac Traxler Along every step of our journey through life, our mind is being programmed. If we are not programming it ourselves, someone else is doing it to us. --Joseph Rain 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 Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Nartin Fowler
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