Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning. --Isaac Traxler A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Alan Perlis Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. --Unix Fortune How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why. --perldoc perl Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. --Alan Kay Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist --Pablo Picasso First solve the problem. Then, write the code. --Waseem Latif Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Nartin Fowler College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility. --Dennis Miller Think twice, code once. --Waseem Latif 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 Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. --Martin Fowler Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard. --unknown How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules? --Anonymous Premature optimization is the root of all evil. --Donald Knuth If the steps become to big, they become walls... --Herb Sutter Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. --Louis Srygley 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 [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 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 Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail. --Max Kanat-Alexander
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