[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 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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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.
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
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
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
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
...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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
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