Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
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
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
[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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha