Computer Language Quotes - Page 4

• A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

  Marvin Minsky

  Typewriters, Trying, Sound

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• The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Profound

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.129, Springer Science & Business Media

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• FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Years, Mind, Use

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

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• The structure of a software system provides the ecology in which code is born, matures, and dies. A well-designed habitat allows for the successful evolution of all the components needed in a software system.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Learning, Successful, Habitat

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• The discipline of programming is most like sorcery. Both use precise language to instruct inanimate objects to do our bidding. Small mistakes in programs or spells can lead to completely unforseen behavior: e.g., see the story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Neither study is easy: "...her [Galinda's] early appetite for sorcery had waned once she'd heard what a grind it was to learn spells and, worse, to understand them." from the book "Wicked" by G. Maguire.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Mistake, Book, Learning

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• Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only too sizes; too big and too small.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Learning, Size, Language

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• A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

  Seymour Papert

  Learning, Thinking, Favors

  "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas". Book by Seymour Papert, 1980.

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• You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.

  Richard R. Nelson

  Learning, Space, Honor

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• Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.

  Harold Morowitz

  Learning, Character, Technique

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• The only way for errors to occur in a program is by being put there by the author. No other mechanisms are known. Programs can't acquire bugs by sitting around with other buggy programs. Right practice aims at preventing insertion of errors and, failing that, removing them before testing or any other running of the program.

  Hayley Mills

  Running, Learning, Errors

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• A class, in Java, is where we teach objects how to behave.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Learning, Class, Java

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

  Larry Wall

  Shells, Scripts, Easier

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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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• 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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• 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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• If our designs are failing due to the constant rain of changing requirements, it is our designs that are at fault. We must somehow find a way to make our designs resilient to such changes and protect them from rotting.

  Robert Cecil Martin

  Rain, Learning, Simplicity

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• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Technology, Possible And Impossible

  Letter to the editor, Science, 19 Jan. 1968.

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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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• The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

  Fred Brooks

  Character, Thinking, Perfect

  "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering". Book by Frederick Brooks, 1975.

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• There are different kinds of people in the world.

  Cheryl James

  People, Different, World

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• If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's hard to eat spaghetti.

  David Allen

  Education, Perspective, Innovation

  Twitter post from Apr 03, 2009

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  All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

  Galileo Galilei

  Inspirational, Truth, Science

  "Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work". Book by Melissa Giovagnoli, 1999.

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• Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

  Gore Vidal

  Business, Useless Stuff, Time Management

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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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• What I can't create I don't understand

  Richard P. Feynman

  Computer Programming, Programming Languages, I Can

  Quoted in James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)

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