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)



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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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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 important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--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
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
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 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
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
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
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay