Programming Languages Quotes

• A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Thinking, Profound, Tools

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• Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Views, Wings

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• I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Technology, Thinking

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• Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

  Donald Knuth

  Change, Attitude, Learning

  "The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 3". Book by Donald Knuth, www.wired.com. 1973.

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• About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Stupid, Axes, Trying

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

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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 ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

  Grace Hopper

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  1987 Address at Trinity College, Washington. Reported in Time, 22 Jun.

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• If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Simplicity, Program, Structure

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  It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Mathematics, Mathematical, Possession

  Letter to Farkas Bolyai, September 02, 1808.

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• If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Truth

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2005). “Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning”, p.120, New World Library

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• If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

  Abraham Maslow

  Education, Wisdom, Humorous

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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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• The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

  Robert Kiyosaki

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Twitter post from Jan 30, 2017

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• Experience comes from bad judgment.

  Mark Twain

  Learning Something New, Hiking, Climbing

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• The only way for errors to occur in a program is by being put there by the author. No other mechanisms are known. Programs can't acquire bugs by sitting around with other buggy programs.

  Harlan Mills

  Errors, Sitting, Way

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• If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.

  Bill Joy

  Running, Morning, Wall

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• Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.

  Alan Kay

  Language, Building, Programming

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• I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.

  Alan Perlis

  Fun, Learning, Successful

  "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Textbook by Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson, 2nd edition, 1996.

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• Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.

  Hayley Mills

  Learning, Golf, Games

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• The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

  Richard Hamming

  Learning, Math, Numbers

  "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers". Book by Richard Hamming, 1962.

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• The value of a prototype is in the education it gives you, not in the code itself.

  Amari Cooper

  Learning, Giving, Programming

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• A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

  Marvin Minsky

  Typewriters, Trying, Sound

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• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

  Brian Kernighan

  Clever, Writing, Debugging

  Brian W. Kernighan, P. J. Plauger (1978). “The Elements of Programming Style”, Computing McGraw-Hill

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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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