Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
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
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 big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.
--Larry Wall
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
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
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
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
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.
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods