Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
[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 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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
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
...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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
|