Computer Language Quotes - Page 3

• Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e. it always increases.

  Norman Ralph Augustine

  Science, Law, Literature

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• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

  Will Durant

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Twitter post from Jan 30, 2017

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• The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Writing, Learning, Way

  Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie (1988). “C Programming Language”, p.23, Prentice Hall

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• We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Learning, Roots, Evil

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• Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

  Donald Knuth

  Change, Attitude, Learning

  "The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3". Book by Donald Knuth, www.wired.com. 1973.

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• A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

  Alan Perlis

  Attention, Levels, Language

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Inspirational, Motivational, Courage

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• If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.

  Bill Joy

  Running, Morning, Wall

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• The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability.

  Randall E. Stross

  Creativity, Technology, Order

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• When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Quality, Experts, Debugging

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• It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

  Albert Einstein

  Courage, Moving, Simple

  "Small is Beautiful". The Radical Humanist, Vol. 37, No. 5, (p. 22), August 1973.

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• Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

  Martin Fowler

  Inspirational, Funny, Humorous

  Jay Fields, Shane Harvie, Martin Fowler, Kent Beck (2009). “Refactoring: Ruby Edition”, p.36, Pearson Education

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• Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Mastery, Tongue

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

  Philip Greenspun

  Half, Bugs, Common

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• At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of which is the error of blaming it on the computer.

  Tom Gilb

  Learning, Errors, Two

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• A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

  Douglas Adams

  Inspirational, Funny, Fake People

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.690, Pan Macmillan

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• C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Funny, Witty, Humorous

  Bjarne Stroustrup's FAQ: Did you really say that?, www.stroustrup.com.

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• If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

  Brian Kernighan

  Clever, Writing, Debugging

  Brian W. Kernighan, P. J. Plauger (1978). “The Elements of Programming Style”, Computing McGraw-Hill

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• Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1960). “You Learn by Living”, p.168, Westminster John Knox Press

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• The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

  Jacques Barzun

  Teacher, Truth, Science

  "Reasons to De-Test the Schools". The New York Times, October 11, 1988.

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• There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

  Peter Drucker

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

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• Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.

  Walter Chrysler

  Funny, Jobs, Hard Work

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  It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Mathematics, Mathematical, Possession

  Letter to Farkas Bolyai, September 02, 1808.

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• It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.

  Larry Wall

  Shells, Scripts, Easier

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