Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
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