Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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.
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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