Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
[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
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis