Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
[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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
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
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti.
--Andrew Hunt