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
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
--Donald Knuth
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
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--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
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
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
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
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
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Martin Fowler
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
--Pablo Picasso
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality that she thinks she'll get complex software right the first time?
--James Alan Gardner
When in doubt, do something.
--Harry Chapin
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
--John Ciardi
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them.
--Joshua Bloch
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
There ain't no rules around here. We are trying to accomplish something.
--Thomas Edison
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Alan Perlis
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
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--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 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
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
There is nothing good or bad about knowledge itself; morality lies in the application of knowledge.
--Jon Erickson