Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Spring 2022 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (1216 Patrick Taylor, 6:30 PM - 8:20 PM)



Class Home




Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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
[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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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.
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown