Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Spring 2023 -- CSC 2700 Section 01 (1216 Patrick Taylor, 6:30 PM - 8:20 PM)



Class Home




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 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
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
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
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley