Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
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
Think twice, code once.
--Waseem Latif
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
--Alan Kay
The really good programmers spend a lot of time programming. I haven’t seen very good programmers who don’t spend a lot of time programming. If I don’t program for two or three days, I need to do it. And you get better at it—you get quicker at it. The side effect of writing all this other stuff is that when you get to doing ordinary problems, you can do them very quickly.
--Joe Armstrong
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
...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
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
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
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Twenty hours at the keyboard can save you two hours of planning.
--Isaac Traxler
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson
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
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
You are not reading this book because a teacher assigned it to you, you are reading it because you have a desire to learn, and wanting to learn is the biggest advantage you can have.
--Cory Althoff
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
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
--George Bernard Shaw
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
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.
[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
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
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay