Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
--Theodore H. White
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
[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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl