Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
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
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth