Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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
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
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
--Edward V. Berard
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
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
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
[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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.