Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. --Louis Srygley What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time? --James Alan Gardner 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 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 A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points --Alan Kay The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. --Alan Kay Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability. --George Bernard Shaw Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning. --Isaac Traxler College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility. --Dennis Miller First solve the problem. Then, write the code. --Waseem Latif Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist --Pablo Picasso Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively --Dalai Lama XIV That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship. --David Thomas 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 Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. 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 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 important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user. --C.A.R. Hoare How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous Think twice, code once. --Waseem Latif Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Nartin Fowler 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 Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it. --Donald Knuth 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 Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard The best way to predict the future is to invent it --Alan Kay The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines. --Steve McConnell 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 When in doubt, do something. --Harry Chapin 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. 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 The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. --perldoc perl 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 What is a university/college when the students lose interest? --Isaac Traxler Premature optimization is the root of all evil. --Donald Knuth 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 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 Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. --Keith Bostic
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