Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

ICPC Computer Programming Contest Prep

Problem Solving in Computer Science

Fall 2024 -- CSC 2700 Section 01
1720 Business Education North Wing, 6:00 PM - 7:50 PM



Class Home




Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
So if an algorithm is an idealized recipe, a program is the detailed set of instructions for a cooking robot preparing a month of meals for an army while under enemy attack
--Kernighan Brian
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
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
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