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 First solve the problem. Then, write the code. --Waseem Latif 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 Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler 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 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 Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively --Dalai Lama XIV That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven ...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 The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. --Alan Kay [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 Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard 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 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 Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra
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