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)



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How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
The real nightmare, worse than the one in which the Big Machine wants to kill you, is the one in which it sees you as irrelevant, or not even as a discrete thing to know.
--Benjamin H Bratton
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
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
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 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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
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
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
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