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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
[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 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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
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
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
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