'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability. --George Bernard Shaw A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live --John Woods Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler 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 The best way to predict the future is to invent it --Alan Kay 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 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 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 Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti. --Andrew Hunt It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good. --Hary Chapin 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 What is a university/college when the students lose interest? --Isaac Traxler Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out. --Chris Pine 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 People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. --Kent Beck Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it. --Donald Knuth Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra 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 There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson 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 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. --John Ciardi Premature optimization is the root of all evil. --Donald Knuth A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Alan Perlis How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. --perldoc perl Think twice, code once. --Waseem Latif Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander 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 personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming. --Audrey Watters Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. --Keith Bostic A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points --Alan Kay If the steps become to big, they become walls... --Herb Sutter
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