Writing Code Quotes

• 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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• Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

  Brian Kernighan

  Inspirational, Funny, Smart

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• Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

  Tom Van Vleck

  Real, Writing, Should

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• A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

  Bill Gates

  Technology, Average, Computer

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• At forty, I was too old to work as a programmer myself anymore; writing code is a young person’s job.

  Michael Crichton

  Jobs, Writing, Young

  Michael Crichton (2002). “Prey”

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• I like writing code. I like building product. I like making things that people like.

  Paul Buchheit

  Writing, People, Building

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• Writing code means always having to say you're sorry.

  Paul Ford

  Sorry, Writing, Mean

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• Learning how to code and program computers when I was a kid was one of the best choices I made growing up. By writing code, I learned how to bring my dreams to life, how to budget, and how to build stuff. Whatever path you choose in life - being an artist, an engineer, a lawyer, a teacher, or even a politician, you will give yourself a huge leg up if you learn how to code.

  Robert Glaser

  Dream, Teacher, Growing Up

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• I find if you're targeting Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X right from the start, your code will probably work anywhere else that you might try it later. Writing code that is cross-platform from the start requires more discipline, but I find it is worth the effort.

  Ryan C. Gordon

  Writing, Discipline, Effort

  Interview with Luboš Doležel, www.abclinuxu.cz. March 08, 2011.

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• Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

  Larry Wall

  Writing, Code

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• I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

  Richard Stallman

  Wall, Writing, Years

  Richard Stallman (2002). “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman”, p.14, Lulu.com

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• Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design.

  Joel Spolsky

  Writing, Design, Programming

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• If you really want to know about the future, don't ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don't ask somebody who's writing code. No, if you want to know what society's going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher.

  Clifford Stoll

  Teacher, Writing, Years

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• Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use - now that's the hard stuff.

  Jeff Atwood

  Writing, Hands, Creating

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