Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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.
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
So if an algorithm is an idealized recipe, a program is the detailed set of instructions for a cooking robot preparing a month of meals for an army while under enemy attack
--Kernighan Brian
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.
--Richard Stallman
[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
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler