With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.
--Richard Stallman
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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
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
The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles.
--Steven S. Skiena
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--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
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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