Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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
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
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
--Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
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.
--Nartin Fowler
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi