Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. --Kent Beck 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 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 A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out. --Chris Pine Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard 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 Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist --Pablo Picasso 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 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 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 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 People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user. --C.A.R. Hoare Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live --John Woods Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them. --Joshua Bloch 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 That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven Happiness should be a function without any parameters. --Pranshu Midha A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. --John Ciardi 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 There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson If the steps become to big, they become walls... --Herb Sutter A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Alan Perlis 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 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 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 Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. --Louis Srygley What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time? --James Alan Gardner
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