Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. --Keith Bostic 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 ...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 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 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 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 Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship. --David Thomas The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user. --C.A.R. Hoare There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something. --Thomas Edison 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 When in doubt, do something. --Harry Chapin Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune Premature optimization is the root of all evil. --Donald Knuth What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time? --James Alan Gardner 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 It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good. --Hary Chapin The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. --perldoc perl 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability. --George Bernard Shaw That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. --Larry Niven Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist --Pablo Picasso Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning. --Isaac Traxler Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander 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 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 Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code. --Edsger W. Dijkstra 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 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. --John Ciardi People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware --Alan Kay Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay 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 Happiness should be a function without any parameters. --Pranshu Midha How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Alan Perlis Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. --Paul Graham Think twice, code once. --Waseem Latif First solve the problem. Then, write the code. --Waseem Latif 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 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 The best way to predict the future is to invent it --Alan Kay [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 Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge. --Jon Erickson
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