Programming quotes
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The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
-- Alan Kay -
I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
-- Alan Kay -
The greatest single programming language ever designed
-- Alan Kay -
Any noun can be verbed.
-- Alan Perlis -
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The best book on programming for the layman is 'Alice in Wonderland'; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
-- Alan Perlis -
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
-- Alan Perlis -
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
-- Alan Perlis -
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
-- Alan Perlis -
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Optimization hinders evolution.
-- Alan Perlis -
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
-- Alan Turing -
Object-oriented programming aficionados think that everything is an object.... this [isn't] so. There are things that are objects. Things that have state and change their state are objects. And then there are things that are not objects. A binary search is not an object. It is an algorithm
-- Alexander Stepanov -
Invention is arrived at by intelligent stumbling.
-- Amar Bose -
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If you think something is impossible, don't disturb the person who is doing it!
-- Amar Bose -
The value of a prototype is in the education it gives you, not in the code itself.
-- Amari Cooper -
Your choice of programming model also is your choice of programming model, so to speak.
-- Anders Hejlsberg -
Ethernet always wins.
-- Andy Bechtolsheim -
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Programming in Go is like being young again (but more productive!).
-- Anneli Jaatteenmaki -
Perfect reusable components are not obtained at the first shot.
-- Bertrand Meyer -
Ask not first what the system does; ask what it does it to!
-- Bertrand Meyer -
I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining
-- Bjarne Stroustrup -
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We are programmed; we are literally programmed genetically and then we are programmed environmentally and most people never break out of that programming.
-- Bob Proctor -
In programming, it’s often the buts in the specification that kill you.
-- Boris Beizer -
The trick is to fix the problem you have, rather than the problem you want.
-- Bram Cohen -
A good way to have good ideas is by being unoriginal.
-- Bram Cohen -
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Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong.
-- Brian Greene -
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
We don't have much time, so we don't teach them; we acquaint them with things that they can learn.
-- Charles E. Leiserson -
Owning a computer without programming is like having a kitchen and using only the microwave oven
-- Charles Petzold -
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Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick
-- Charles Petzold -
Don't tell television, but there is some superior programming being made on the Interwebz.
-- Chris Hardwick -
And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++.
-- Darl McBride -
If we can't program it, we can't understand it.
-- David Deutsch -
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Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't.
-- David Gelernter -
Learning. It's really the primary reason behind everything I do. Programming, entrepreneuring, writing.
-- Derek Sivers -
Programming languages are like girlfriends: The new one is better because *you* are better.
-- Derek Sivers -
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.
-- Donald Knuth -
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Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics.
-- Doron Zeilberger -
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
Beauty is our business.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
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It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger Dijkstra -
To solve an interesting problem, start by finding a problem that is interesting to you.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
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A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
Go is no Erlang, Smalltalk or Scheme, nothing pure. But it works great and is fun!
-- Frank Muller -
Go isn't functional, it's pragmatical. Why pure paradigms like FP or OOP are always a must? (sigh)
-- Frank Muller -
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Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build.
-- Fred Brooks -
Successful software always gets changed.
-- Fred Brooks -
Don't worry about how things are. Watch where they are headed.
-- Fred Green -
I think the cultural programming on the ABC is one of the glories of the ABC.
-- George Brandis -
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Bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power.
-- George Gilder -
The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.
-- Gordon Bell -
The number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double in about 18 months.
-- Gordon Moore -
The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.
-- Grady Booch -
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Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals.
-- Henry Spencer -
To understand this whole area, you have to stop thinking like a viewer and start thinking like a network programming exec.
-- J. Michael Straczynski -
Ive enjoyed programming on NPR, but were broke and therefore all spending must be reduced.
-- Jaime Herrera Beutler -
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
-- Jakob Nielsen -
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I just want things to work properly.
-- James Dyson -
In the particular is contained the universal.
-- James Joyce -
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.
-- Jamie Zawinski -
Your mind is programmable – if you’re not programming your mind, someone else will program it for you.
-- Jeremy Hammond -
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Good software, like wine, takes time.
-- Joel Spolsky -
We just have to come in every morning and somehow, launch the editor.
-- Joel Spolsky -
Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.
-- Joel Spolsky -
Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.
-- Joel Spolsky -
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A program that produces incorrect results twice as fast is infinitely slower.
-- John Ousterhout -
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.
-- John von Neumann -
For many phenomena, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.
-- Joseph M. Juran -
When in doubt, leave it out.
-- Joshua Bloch -
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You know, I've never accidentally drilled a hole in myself while programming.
-- Karl Lehenbauer -
It's a curious thing about our industry: not only do we not learn from our mistakes, we also don't learn from our successes.
-- Keith Braithwaite -
One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.
-- Ken Thompson -
Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.
-- Kent Beck -
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Once the business data have been centralized and integrated, the value of the database is greater than the sum of the preexisting parts.
-- Larry Ellison -
You cannot reduce the complexity of a given task beyond a certain point. Once you've reached that point, you can only shift the burden around.
-- Larry Tesler -
Perl programming is an *empirical* science!
-- Larry Wall -
Complexity has nothing to do with intelligence, simplicity does.
-- Lawrence Bossidy -
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It's against my programming to impersonate a deity.
-- Lawrence Kasdan -
I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?
-- Lewis Carroll -
Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.
-- Linus Torvalds -
Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.
-- Linus Torvalds -
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Talk is cheap. Show me the code.
-- Linus Torvalds -
I skip through the programming to watch the commercials.
-- Mel Karmazin -
With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time.
-- Miguel de Icaza -
Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning.
-- Nicholas Negroponte -
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Programming is usually taught by examples.
-- Niklaus Wirth -
Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
-- Niklaus Wirth -
Nevertheless, I consider OOP as an aspect of programming in the large; that is, as an aspect that logically follows programming in the small and requires sound knowledge of procedural programming.
-- Niklaus Wirth -
If they can shut down ABC News and ABC network programming just because they don't agree on something, it makes you wonder
-- Orrin Hatch -
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If you don’t take responsibility for programming yourself, then someone else will.
-- Paul McKenna -
SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.
-- Philip Greenspun -
You are being programmed all day, every day. You can't stop it, but you can determine if the programming is positive or negative.
-- Randy Gage -
There are people who actually like programming. I dont understand why they like programming.
-- Rasmus Lerdorf -
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I don't like programming. It's tedious.
-- Rasmus Lerdorf -
I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
-- Ray Bradbury -
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.
-- Richard P. Feynman -
Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft.
-- Richard Stallman -
