Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

...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
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
[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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
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
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
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
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
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
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
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