What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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.
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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