Programmers Quotes - Page 2

• It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.

  Alan Cooper

  Technology, Discipline, Example

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• The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.

  Brian Kernighan

  Tools, Debugging, Programming

  "Unix for Beginners". Paper by Brian Kernighan, 1979.

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• Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Art, Two Towers, Deeper

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.409, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

  Steve Wozniak

  Technology, Computer, Window

  "How Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Gets Things Done". Interview with Kevin Purdy, lifehacker.com. April 22, 2009.

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• I have found that the reason a lot of people are interested in artificial intelligence is the same reason a lot of people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one.

  David Parnas

  People, Missing, Reason

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• Normal people... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.

  Scott Adams

  Believe, People, Normal

  Scott Adams (1996). “The Dilbert principle: a cubicle's-eye view of bosses, meetings, management fads & other workplace afflictions”

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• Complexity has nothing to do with intelligence, simplicity does.

  Lawrence Bossidy

  Simplicity, Doe, Programming

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• Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set?

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Powerful, Code Quality, Bells

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1976). “A Discipline of Programming”, Prentice Hall

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• The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Confused, Challenges, Scientist

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• In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

  Alan Perlis

  Errors, Programming, Reborn

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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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• A data structure is just a stupid programming language.

  Bill Gosper

  Stupid, Data, Language

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• The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

  Tony Hoare

  Simplicity, Reliability, May

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Tony Hoare's lecture at the 1980 ACM Turing Award in Nashville, Tennessee; "Communications of the ACM", Volume 24, Issue 2, dl.acm.org. February 1981.

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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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• One man's constant is another man's variable.

  Alan Perlis

  Men, Variables, Constant

  Alan J. Perlis (1975). “Introduction to computer science”

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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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• More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.

  William Wulf

  Names, Stupidity, Sin

  "A Case Against the GOTO," Proceedings of the 25th National ACM Conference, (pp. 791-797), August 1972.

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• A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness—not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980, journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean “security breaker.”

  Richard Stallman

  Mean, Community, Mit

  Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing, www.gnu.org. 1996.

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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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• 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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• That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

  Larry Niven

  Hate, Technology, Thinking

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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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• 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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  Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

  Bill Gates

  Success, Trust, Leadership

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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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