Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly.
--Joe Armstrong
[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
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles.
--Steven S. Skiena
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom
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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler