Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2021 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (1206 Patrick Taylor, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM)

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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
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 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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha