Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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
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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
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
[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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
One knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
--Brian Kernighan
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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison