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.
The computing scientist's main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.
Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals.
The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.
More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.
If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.
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.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
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.
Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
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