Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

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
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
...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
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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 most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
--Rick Cook
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 most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter