Computer Programming Quotes - Page 3

• The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Profound

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.129, Springer Science & Business Media

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• The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all.

  Jacques Barzun

  Teaching, Learning, School

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• Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.

  Stephen Covey

  Learning, Priorities, Time Management

  Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill (1997). “First Things First Every Day: Daily Reflections- Because Where You're Headed Is More Important Than How Fast You Get There”, Simon and Schuster

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• If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent."

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Wish, Lines

  "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" by Edsger Dijkstra, www.cs.utexas.edu. December 2, 1988.

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• Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Health, Inspire, Relaxation

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• Just remember: you're not a 'dummy,' no matter what those computer books claim. The real dummies are the people who-though technically expert-couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it.

  Walt Mossberg

  Real, Book, Remember You

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• The bulk of all patents are crap. Spending time reading them is stupid. It's up to the patent owner to do so, and to enforce them.

  Linus Torvalds

  Stupid, Reading, Technology

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• I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

  Jacques Barzun

  Book, Writing, Learning

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• It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.

  Larry Wall

  Shells, Scripts, Easier

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• I, myself, have had many failures and I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be -you aren't stretching your imagination.

  John Backus

  Learning, Imagination, Creative

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• 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.... A programming language is a tool that has profound influence on our thinking habits.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Thinking, Profound

  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (1976). “A Discipline of Programming”, Prentice Hall

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• Computer Science is a science of abstraction -creating the right model for a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it.

  Alfred Aho

  Learning, Creating, Technique

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• FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.

  Alan Perlis

  Weed, Flower, Computer

  Alan J. Perlis (1975). “Introduction to computer science”

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• A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

  Marvin Minsky

  Typewriters, Trying, Sound

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• Text is linear; it is black and white; it doesn't zoom around the page in 3-D; it isn't intelligent by itself; in fact, in terms of immediate reaction it is quite boring. I can't imagine a single preliterate was ever wowed at the first sight of text, and yet text has been the basis of arguably the most fundamental intellectual transformation of the human species. It and its subforms, such as algebra, have made science education for all a plausible goal.

  Andrea diSessa

  Learning, Black And White, Intelligent

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• The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state.

  John Ousterhout

  Inspirational, Transition, Improvement

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• 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.

  Fred Brooks

  Media, Creating, Air

  "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering". Book by Fred Brooks, 1975.

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• The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Writing, Learning, Way

  Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie (1988). “C Programming Language”, p.23, Prentice Hall

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• I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Technology, Thinking

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• The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

  Tony Hoare

  Simplicity, Reliability, May

  "The Emperor's Old Clothes". Tony Hoare's lecture at the 1980 ACM Turing Award in Nashville, Tennessee; "Communications of the ACM", Volume 24, Issue 2, dl.acm.org. February 1981.

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• If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Simplicity, Program, Structure

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• Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

  David Gelernter

  Design, Defense, Complexity

  David Hillel Gelernter (1998). “Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.

  Brian Kernighan

  Trying, Purpose, Defeat

  Brian W. Kernighan, P. J. Plauger (1978). “The Elements of Programming Style”, Computing McGraw-Hill

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• Never hesitate to ask a lesser person.

  Confucius

  Learning, Chinese, Programming

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• Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Views, Wings

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