Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
--Alan Kay
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
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
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
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
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.
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller