Code Quotes

• When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Quality, Experts, Debugging

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• 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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• Code never lies, comments sometimes do.

  Ron Jeffries

  Lying, Sometimes, Programming

  75 Copy quote

• If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Funny, Debugging, Bugs

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• I would imagine that if you could understand Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy.

  Mitch Hedberg

  Funny, Crazy, Humor

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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

  93 Copy quote

• Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

  Alan Kay

  Funny Inspirational, Integrity, Technology

  "A Conversation with Alan Kay: Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk — and much more". Interview with Stuart Feldman in ACM Queue, Volume 2, issue 9, queue.acm.org. December 27, 2004.

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• There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

  Tony Hoare

  Witty, Humorous, Simple

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Communications of the ACM 24 (2), (pp. 75-83), February 1981.

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• Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

  Rick Cook

  Winning, Technology, Race

  "The Wizardry Compiled". Book by Rick Cook, 1989.

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• 

  Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

  Bill Gates

  Success, Trust, Leadership

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• Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Dream, Men, Law

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1902). “History of Woman Suffrage ...: 1883-1900”

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• I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

  Linus Torvalds

  Trust, Data, Differences

  Message to Git mailing list, lwn.net. June 27, 2006.

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• Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

  Linus Torvalds

  Data, Worry, Structure

  Message to Git Mailing List, lwn.net. July 27, 2006.

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• I remarked to Dennis that easily half the code I was writing in Multics was error recovery code. He said, "We left all that stuff out of Unix. If there's an error, we have this routine called panic, and when it is called, the machine crashes, and you holler down the hall, 'Hey, reboot it.'"

  Tom Van Vleck

  Writing, Recovery, Errors

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• The current tax code is a daily mugging.

  Ronald Reagan

  Political, National Debt, Currents

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• Coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.

  Dan Brown

  Class, Events, Connections

  Dan Brown (2010). “The Da Vinci Code: (Robert Langdon Book 2)”, p.21, Random House

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• In this respect a program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it. Yet people talk about programming as if it were a production process and measure "programmer productivity" in terms of "number of lines of code produced". In so doing they book that number on the wrong side of the ledger: we should always refer to "the number of lines of code spent".

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Book, Writing, Numbers

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• Good code is its own best documentation.

  Steve McConnell

  Technology, Documentation, Computer

  Steve McConnell (2004). “Code Complete”, p.817, Pearson Education

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• Men make the moral code and they expect women to accept it. They have decided that it is entirely right and proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is not right and proper for women to fight for theirs.

  Emmeline Pankhurst

  Fighting, Men, Rights

  Emmeline Pankhurst (2015). “My Own Story: Top Biography”, p.146, 谷月社

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• One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.

  Ken Thompson

  Great Day, Lines, Computer

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• Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Technology, Experts, Computer

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• Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

  Donald Knuth

  Funny Inspirational, Bugs, Computer

  Memorandum to Peter van Emde Boas, 29 Mar. 1977

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• The cost of adding a feature isn't just the time it takes to code it. The cost also includes the addition of an obstacle to future expansion. ... The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other.

  John Carmack

  Fighting, Simplicity, Expansion

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• 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

  Funny Inspirational, Documentation, Add

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• The Mozilla project is big in terms of lines of code and complexity.

  Mitchell Baker

  Lines, Mozilla, Projects

  "Next generation browser: Pure open source software development comes of age". Interview with Dana Greenlee, www.tacomadailyindex.com. September 10, 2004.

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