Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2020 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (Patrick Taylor 1218, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM)

Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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 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
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
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
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
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
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune