Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
[On identifying talented programmers] It’s just enthusiasm. You ask them what’s the most interesting program they worked on. And then you get them to describe it and its algorithms and what’s going on. If they can’t withstand my questioning on their program, then they’re not good. I’m asking them to describe something they’ve done that they’ve spent blood on. I’ve never met anybody who really did spend blood on something who wasn’t eager to describe what they’ve done and how they did it and why. I let them pick the subject. I don’t pick the subject, so I’m the amateur and they’re the professional in this subject. If they can’t stand an amateur asking them questions about their profession, then they don’t belong.
--Ken Thompson
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
...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
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
Along every step of our journey through life, our mind is being programmed. If we are not programming it ourselves, someone else is doing it to us.
--Joseph Rain
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi