Competitive/Collaborative Programming Class

Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
[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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly.
--Joe Armstrong
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic