Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
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.
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
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
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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
[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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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
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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
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.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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 change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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 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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
...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
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
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
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 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
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