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
...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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
[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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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.
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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 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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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