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
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
--Alan Kay
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
The personal computer isn't "personal" because it's small and portable and yours to own. It's "personal" because you pour yourself into it - your thoughts, your programming.
--Audrey Watters
Happiness should be a function without any parameters.
--Pranshu Midha
Managers of programming projects aren’t always aware that certain programming issues are matters of religion. If you’re a manager and you try to require compliance with certain programming practices, you’re inviting your programmers’ ire. Here’s a list of religious issues:
■ Programming language
■ Indentation style
■ Placing of braces
■ Choice of IDE
■ Commenting style
■ Efficiency vs. readability tradeoffs
■ Choice of methodology—for example, Scrum vs. Extreme Programming vs. evolutionary delivery ■ Programming utilities
■ Naming conventions
■ Use of gotos
■ Use of global variables
■ Measurements, especially productivity measures such as lines of code per day
--Steve McConnell
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches.
--Paul Graham