Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay