Delivering good software today is often better than perfect software tomorrow, so finish things and ship.
--David Thomas
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
--Unix Fortune
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.
--Kent Beck
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
--Alan Kay
The big optimizations come from refining the high-level design, not the individual routines.
--Steve McConnell
First solve the problem. Then, write the code.
--Waseem Latif
How do you expect to succeed if you do not know the rules?
--Anonymous
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. 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
[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
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
What is a university/college when the students lose interest?
--Isaac Traxler
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live
--John Woods
Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.
--Edsger W. Dijkstra
It's got to be the going not the getting there that's good.
--Hary Chapin
Programming is the art of thinking really hard about how to avoid having to think really hard.
--unknown
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
--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
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
--Nartin Fowler
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.
--Chris Pine
Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
--Keith Bostic
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware
--Alan Kay
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
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
--Larry Niven
Some of the best programming is done on paper, really. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.
--Max Kanat-Alexander
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
--Professor W.
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