Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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
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
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
--Alan J. Perlis
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
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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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