Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2023 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (2317 Patrick Taylor, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM)



Class Home




Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
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
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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
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
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.
--Cory Althoff
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
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.