Programming Quotes - Page 17

• 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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  A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

  Emo Philips

  Funny, Motivational Sports, Humorous

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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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• 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.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Inspirational, Motivational, Courage

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• If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Thinking, Mechanic, Quantum

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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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• When in doubt, leave it out.

  Joshua Bloch

  Doubt, When In Doubt

  "Joshua Bloch: A conversation about design". Interview with Bill Venners, www.javaworld.com. January 4, 2002.

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

  Lawrence Bossidy

  Simplicity, Doe, Complexity

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• Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

  Fred Brooks

  Comfort, Arbitrary, Amusing

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• A data structure is just a stupid programming language.

  Bill Gosper

  Stupid, Data, Language

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• It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

  Erik Naggum

  Tools, Done, Rewards

  "Can lisp do what perl does easily?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. March 28, 2000.

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• A program that produces incorrect results twice as fast is infinitely slower.

  John Ousterhout

  Program, Produce, Results

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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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• 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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• Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Hard Work, Discipline, Simplicity

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• Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Design, Forget, Lost

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

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• A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate.

  Rob Pike

  Smart, Educate, Terminal

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• Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.

  Kent Beck

  Responsibility, Slacker, Testing

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• Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.

  Stan Kelly-Bootle

  Funny Inspirational, Technology, Compromise

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• A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

  Dennis Ritchie

  Simplicity, Language, Computer

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• Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software development is clearly still a black art, and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline.

  William J. Clinton

  Art, Technology, Engineering

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• Software is like sex: It's better when it's free.

  Linus Torvalds

  Sex, Technology, Linux

  Attributed to Torvalds at 1996 FSF conference,

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• As a programmer, it is your job to put yourself out of business. What you do today can be automated tomorrow.

  Douglas McIlroy

  Jobs, Today, Tomorrow

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• Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

  Eric Allin Cornell

  Writing, School, Chess

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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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