Programmers Quotes

• It is a real service to humanity and the world to be a good programmer, particularly if you design great products. You make is easier for everybody, everybody has less headaches.

  Frederick Lenz

  Real, Science, Design

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• Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

  Linus Torvalds

  Data, Worry, Structure

  Message to Git Mailing List, lwn.net. July 27, 2006.

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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

  56 Copy quote

• Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them.

  Joel Spolsky

  Playing Games, Effort, Surfing

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• The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Learning, Simplicity, Important

  Bjarne Stroustrup (2000). “The C++ Programming Language”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.

  John Carmack

  Soul, Levels, Computer

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• One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.

  Ken Thompson

  Great Day, Lines, Computer

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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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• 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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• The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

  Hans Hofmann

  Inspirational, Business, Mean

  1967 Search for the Real.

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• When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Beautiful, Niece

  66 Copy quote

• Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.

  Coco Chanel

  Fashion, Mirrors, House

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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

  Students, Impossible, Programming

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

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• When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Creativity, Thinking

  "The Universal Book of Mathematics". Book by David Darling, p. 34, November 8, 2004.

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• In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

  Yogi Berra

  Leadership, Funny Inspirational, Reality

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

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• 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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• Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

  Tom Van Vleck

  Real, Writing, Should

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• Don't worry kids, you'll find work. After all, my machine will need strong chess player-programmers. You will be the first.

  Mikhail Botvinnik

  Strong, Kids, Player

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• Finding a programmer to work with if you don't already know one will be a challenge. Merely judging if a programmer is exceptional vs. competent will be very hard if you are not one yourself. When you do find someone, work together informally for a while to test your compatibility.

  Jessica Livingston

  Judging, Challenges, Working Together

  "The Advice For Any Woman Who Wants To Found A Startup" by Jessica Livingston, www.businessinsider.com. January 31, 2011.

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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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• It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.

  Steve McConnell

  Murder Mysteries, Needs, Able

  Steve McConnell (2004). “Code Complete”, p.267, Pearson Education

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• A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.

  Doug Linder

  Funny, Humor, Technology

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• It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

  Andy Hertzfeld

  Jobs, Real, Learning

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• Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

  James Gleick

  Player, Skills, Mad

  James Gleick (1992). “Genius: the life and science of Richard Feynman”, Pantheon

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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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