Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Spring 2020 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (Patrick Taylor 1218, 6:30 PM - 8:20 PM)

Class over for the semester!

The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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.
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
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
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
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
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.
--Larry Wall
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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
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
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay