Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2022 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (1216 Patrick Taylor, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM)



Class Home




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
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
...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
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
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
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
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
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.
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
The real nightmare, worse than the one in which the Big Machine wants to kill you, is the one in which it sees you as irrelevant, or not even as a discrete thing to know.
--Benjamin H Bratton
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra