A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune 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. 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 Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively --Dalai Lama XIV 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 Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander 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 Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live --John Woods 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 That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good. --Hary Chapin
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