If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
[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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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
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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--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
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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