Computer Programming Quotes - Page 4

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

  Larry Wall

  Shells, Scripts, Easier

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• Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Health, Inspire, Relaxation

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• Just remember: you're not a 'dummy,' no matter what those computer books claim. The real dummies are the people who-though technically expert-couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it.

  Walt Mossberg

  Real, Book, Remember You

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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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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• I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.

  Tony Hoare

  Learning, Errors, Numbers

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• I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Technology, Thinking

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• In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.

  Tony Hoare

  Powerful, Real, Learning

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• Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Views, Wings

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• When certain concepts of TeX are introduced informally, general rules will be stated; afterwards you will find that the rules aren't strictly true. In general, the later chapters contain more reliable information than the earlier ones do. The author feels that this technique of deliberate lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. Once you understand a simple but false rule, it will not be hard to supplement that rule with its exceptions.

  Donald Knuth

  Lying, Learning, Simple

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• The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

  Richard Hamming

  Learning, Math, Numbers

  "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers". Book by Richard Hamming, 1962.

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• The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them.

  Linus Torvalds

  Stupid, Reading, Technology

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• Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.

  Brian Kernighan

  Trying, Purpose, Defeat

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

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• In those days [batch processing] programmers never even documented their programs, because it was assumed that nobody else would ever use them. Now, however, time-sharing had made exchanging software trivial: you just stored one copy in the public repository and therby effectively gave it to the world. Immediately people began to document their programs and to think of them as being usable by others. They started to build on each other's work.

  Robert Fano

  Learning, Thinking, People

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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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• Software is like sex: It's better when it's free.

  Linus Torvalds

  Sex, Technology, Linux

  Attributed to Torvalds at 1996 FSF conference,

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• The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

  Robert Coveyou

  Learning, Numbers, Important

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• Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline.

  William J. Clinton

  Art, Technology, Engineering

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• Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Views, Skills

  "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, dl.acm.org. December 1974.

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• There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.

  Edward Tufte

  Technology, Two, Computer

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• It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.

  Steve McConnell

  Funny Inspirational, Errors, Coders

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• C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Quirky, Computer, Programming

  "Inventing Unix". Interview with Samuel K. Moore, Steven Cherry, spectrum.ieee.org. May 27, 2011.

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• You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.

  Bertrand Meyer

  Technology, Quality, Computer

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• I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

  Douglas Adams

  Hands, Tasks, Computer

  Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine (2011). “Last Chance to See”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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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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