Computer Programmers Quotes

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

  Richard E. Pattis

  Quality, Experts, Debugging

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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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• 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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• The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Technology, Thinking, Swim

  Interview with Jack Schofield, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2002.

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• A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

  Douglas Adams

  Inspirational, Funny, Fake People

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.690, Pan Macmillan

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• Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Business, Intelligent, Thinking

  "Peter's Almanac". Book by Laurence J. Peter. Entry for September 24, 1982.

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• It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

  Andy Hertzfeld

  Jobs, Real, Learning

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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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• 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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• Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.

  Ray Ozzie

  Frustration, Technology, Challenges

  "Burden of the years weighs on Windows" by Steve Lohr and John Markoff, www.nytimes.com. March 26, 2006.

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• As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Mistake, Technology, Coders

  "The Design and Use of the EDSAC". Lecture delivered at the Digital Computer Museum, September 23, 1979.

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• The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Humorous, Learning, Agreement

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• I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

  Maurice Wilkes

  Mistake, Coders, Debugging

  Lecture titled "The Design and Use of the EDSAC" delivered by Maurice Wilkes at the Digital Computer Museum, tcm.computerhistory.org. September 23, 1979.

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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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• The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.

  Henry Petroski

  Technology, Achievement, Gains

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• Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

  Larry Wall

  Funny, Technology, Three

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• The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability.

  Randall E. Stross

  Creativity, Technology, Order

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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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• Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

  Brian Kernighan

  Technology, Essence, Simplicity

  Brian W. Kernighan (1981). “Software Tools in Pascal”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.

  Gordon Bell

  Engineering, Programming, Software

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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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• 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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• 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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• As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

  David Parnas

  Real, Learning, Insomnia

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• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

  Donald Knuth

  Science, Roots, Evil

  Donald Ervin Knuth (1986). “TEX: The Program”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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