Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
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.
[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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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 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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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 language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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