There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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.
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
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
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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