Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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.
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 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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
[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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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 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
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
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