It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good. --Hary Chapin 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 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 A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Alan Perlis 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 People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --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 ...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 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 How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out. --Chris Pine 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 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 A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points --Alan Kay Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler Happiness should be a function without any parameters. --Pranshu Midha 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 [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 I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. --Kent Beck Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Nartin Fowler 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 There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison 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 There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson
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