Programmers Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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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• The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.

  Grady Booch

  Simple, Simplicity, Computer

  "Qt for Symbian". Book by Frank H. P. Fitzek et al., 2010.

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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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• There are a couple of people in the world who can really program in C or FØRTRAN. They write more code in less time than it takes for other programmers. Most programmers aren't that good. The problem is that those few programmers who crank out code aren't interested in maintaining it.

  Bill Joy

  Couple, Writing, People

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• Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for.

  Chris Sacca

  Simplicity, Entrepreneur, Use

  Twitter post from Dec 9, 2014

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• The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

  Oswald Chambers

  Inspirational, Life, Business

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• Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

  Andy Rooney

  Witty, Work, Technology

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• In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Success, Business, Military

  Quoted in Richard Nixon, Six Crises (1962)

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• The best is the enemy of the good.

  Voltaire

  Inspirational, Military, Learning

  Letter to Duc de Richelieu, 18 June 1744. Although this saying is now associated with Voltaire, he is obviously quoting an Italian proverb here. The French form, which he used later, is Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

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• Laziness is a programmers main virtue.

  Larry Wall

  Inspiring, Inspire, Laziness

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• The programmers of tomorrow are the wizards of the future. You're going to look like you have magic powers compared to everybody else.

  Gabe Newell

  Magic, Looks, Wizards

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• It would be just like programmers to shorten 'the year 2000 problem' to 'Y2K'- exactly the kind of thinking that created this situation in the first place.

  Stephen C. Meyer

  Thinking, Years, Would Be

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• UNIX is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate its simplicity.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Simple, Appreciate, Simplicity

  "Unix: A Dialectic". Book by Dennis Ritchie, 1989.

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• The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

  Fred Brooks

  Media, Creating, Air

  "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering". Book by Fred Brooks, 1975.

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• To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accomodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable.

  Ellen Ullman

  Errors

  "The myth of order" by Ellen Ullman, www.wired.com. April 1, 1999.

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• All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.

  Seth Godin

  Doe, Way, Computer

  Seth Godin (2015). “Poke The Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?”, p.11, Penguin

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• To a programmer, an operating system is defined by its API.

  Charles Petzold

  Operating Systems, Defined

  Charles Petzold (1998). “Programming Windows”, p.35, Pearson Education

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• The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-It notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer.

  Ellen Ullman

  Yellow, Needs, Machines

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• The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Thinking, Errors, Connections

  Bjarne Stroustrup (2013). “The C++ Programming Language”, p.13, Addison-Wesley

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• If you think you're a really good programmer... read Knuth's Art of Computer Programming... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.

  Bill Gates

  Art, Science, Thinking

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• The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully.

  Alan Kay

  Design, Coins, Done

  ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• Programmers are expensive. Hardware is cheap.

  Karl Lehenbauer

  Hardware, Expensive

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• Once we were Programmers. Maybe our last best hope is a movie.

  Erik Naggum

  Lasts, Hoping For The Best

  "PART TWO: winning industrial-use of lisp". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. June 19, 2002.

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• It would've been amazing [to work as programmer]. You're good at numbers, you're good with people, you like to wear shorts in the summertime.

  Jimmy Fallon

  Numbers, People, Summertime

  "Jimmy Fallon Interviews Jimmy Fallon". Interview with Eric Spitznagel and Peter Yang, www.menshealth.com. December 23, 2014.

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