There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--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
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
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
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
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
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
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
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
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--Donald Knuth
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
[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
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
...I’m not saying simple code takes less time to write. You’d think it would since you end up with less total code, but a good solution isn’t an accretion of code, it’s a distillation of it.
--Robert Nystrom
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
If the steps become to big, they become walls...
--Herb Sutter
'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
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
The three principal virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. See the Camel Book for why.
--perldoc perl
Without requirements and design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.
--Louis Srygley
College is a waystation - the last convenience store on the road to life-long responsibility.
--Dennis Miller
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison