Computer Programming Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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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  The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Inspiring, Education, Wisdom

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer.

  Steve McConnell

  Funny Inspirational, Documentation, Add

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• Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

  David Gelernter

  Technology, Simplicity, Important

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• The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.

  Seymour Cray

  Technology, Too Late, Coders

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• Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.

  Donald Knuth

  Funny Inspirational, Reading, Following Instructions

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1984). “The texbook”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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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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• Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

  Larry Wall

  Funny, Technology, Three

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• Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly'... Their best approach so far has been to take all the old brochures and stamp the words 'user-friendly' on the cover.

  Bill Gates

  Technology, Trying, Friendly

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• The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.

  Henry Petroski

  Technology, Achievement, Gains

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• As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Mistake, Technology, Coders

  "The Design and Use of the EDSAC". Lecture delivered at the Digital Computer Museum, September 23, 1979.

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• That's what's cool about working with computers. They don't argue, they remember everything, and they don't drink all your beer.

  Paul Leary

  Beer, Technology, Remembers Everything

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• Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.

  Kent Beck

  Technology, Optimism, Hazards

  Kent Beck (2000). “Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change”, p.31, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.

  Robert Sewell

  Java, Garbage, Execution

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• There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

  Alan Perlis

  Writing, Errors, Two

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM "SIGPLAN" Notices 17 (9), (pp. 7-13), September 1982.

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• As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

  David Parnas

  Real, Learning, Insomnia

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• The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.

  John Carmack

  Fighting, Simplicity, Expansion

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• Learning to code makes kids feel empowered, creative, and confident. If we want our young women to retain these traits into adulthood, a great option is to expose them to computer programming in their youth.

  Susan Wojcicki

  Kids, Creative, Want

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• On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

  Charles Babbage

  Ideas, Two, Confusion

  Passages from the Life of a Philosopher ch. 5 (1864) See Countess of Lovelace 1; Modern Proverbs 35

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• Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

  Alan Kay

  Funny Inspirational, Integrity, Technology

  "A Conversation with Alan Kay: Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk — and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman in ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

  Donald Knuth

  Funny Inspirational, Bugs, Computer

  Memorandum to Peter van Emde Boas, 29 Mar. 1977

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

  Tony Hoare

  Roots, Evil, Simplicity

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• Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

  Brian Kernighan

  Inspirational, Funny, Smart

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• The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

  Tony Hoare

  Simplicity, Reliability, Programming

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