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




That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
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
...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
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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 best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
[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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.