We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.
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.
The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state.
It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.
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.
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.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
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.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law
One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.
Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this," well, that would be enough immortality for me.
It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of other midgets.
Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do
The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
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