How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
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
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Our consciousness is programmed. We see things a certain way from a young age - we're programmed to keep doing them that way. Then you have to spend adulthood learning how to overcome it, to read out the programs. Try to create. I want to tell people to create. Just start by creating your day. Then create your life.
--Prince
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively
--Dalai Lama XIV
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.
You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.
--Cory Althoff
[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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
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.
--Alan Perlis
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay