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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan 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
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
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
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
The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.
--C.A.R. Hoare