Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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.
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
[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
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter