A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. – Doug Linder, systems administrator
A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits. – Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist
Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague… The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise. – Edsger Dijkstra
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one’s native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. – Edsger Dijkstra
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. – Bjarne Stroustrup, developer of the C++ programming language
Commentary: most debugging problems are fixed easily; identifying the location of the problem is hard. – unknown
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. – Bill Clinton, former President of the United States
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. – Bill Bryson, author, from Notes from a Big Country
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e. g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone). – Eric S.
Raymond, programmer and advocate of open source software, from The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Good code is its own best documentation. As you’re about to add a comment, ask yourself, ‘How can I improve the code so that this comment isn’t needed?’ Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer. – Steve McConnell, software engineer and author, from Code Complete
Hey! It compiles! Ship it! – unknown
Inside every well-written large program is a well-written small program. – Charles Antony Richard Hoare, computer scientist
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. – Nathaniel S. Borenstein, computer scientist
Managing programmers is like herding cats. – unknown
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. – Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation
More good code has been written in languages denounced as bad than in languages proclaimed wonderful – much more. – Bjarne Stroustrup, from The Design and Evolution of C++
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. – Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, computer scientists and authors, from The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
Real programmers don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. – unknown
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