Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
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 is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.
--Richard Stallman
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.
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry 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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi