A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune 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 Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points --Alan Kay '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. --Martin Fowler Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra 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 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 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 Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. --Paul Graham 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 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 What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time? --James Alan Gardner Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin 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 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 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 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 There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison If the steps become to big, they become walls... --Herb Sutter When in doubt, do something. --Harry Chapin 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 The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language. --Alan Kay Think twice, code once. --Waseem Latif The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. --perldoc perl People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay 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. 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 Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user. --C.A.R. Hoare 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 The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines. --Steve McConnell 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 ...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 Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them. --Joshua Bloch Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning. --Isaac Traxler Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown 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 I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. --Kent Beck A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. --John Ciardi There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson 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 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 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 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 First solve the problem. Then, write the code. --Waseem Latif College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility. --Dennis Miller
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