Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
[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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
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
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.
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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
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
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
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
...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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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