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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
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
[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
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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 most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
|