Computer Programming Quotes - Page 4

• The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

  Richard Hamming

  Learning, Math, Numbers

  "Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers". Book by Richard Hamming, 1962.

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• When certain concepts of TeX are introduced informally, general rules will be stated; afterwards you will find that the rules aren't strictly true. In general, the later chapters contain more reliable information than the earlier ones do. The author feels that this technique of deliberate lying will actually make it easier for you to learn the ideas. Once you understand a simple but false rule, it will not be hard to supplement that rule with its exceptions.

  Donald Knuth

  Lying, Learning, Simple

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• We teachers make the road, others will make the journey.

  Victor Hugo

  Teacher, Learning, Journey

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• Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

  Philip Greenspun

  Half, Bugs, Common

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• The first step in fixing a broken program is getting it to fail repeatably [on the simplest example possible].

  Tom Duff

  Learning, Broken, Example

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• In those days [batch processing] programmers never even documented their programs, because it was assumed that nobody else would ever use them. Now, however, time-sharing had made exchanging software trivial: you just stored one copy in the public repository and therby effectively gave it to the world. Immediately people began to document their programs and to think of them as being usable by others. They started to build on each other's work.

  Robert Fano

  Learning, Thinking, People

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• Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. ... The geniuses of the computer field, on the the other hand, are the people with the keenest aesthetic senses, the ones who are capable of creating beauty. Beauty is decisive at every level: the most important interfaces, the most important programming languages, the winning algorithms are the beautiful ones.

  David Gelernter

  Beautiful, Learning, Winning

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• Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs.

  David Gelernter

  Powerful, Real, Learning

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• Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end.

  Khalil Gibran

  Learning, Ends, Programming

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 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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• I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.

  Tony Hoare

  Learning, Errors, Numbers

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• In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.

  Tony Hoare

  Powerful, Real, Learning

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• To treat programming scientifically, it must be possible to specify the required properties of programs precisely. Formality is certainly not an end in itself. The importance of formal specifications must ultimately rest in their utility -in whether or not they are used to improve the quality of software or to reduce the cost of producing and maintaining software.

  Jim Horning

  Learning, Quality, Cost

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• 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.

  William J. Clinton

  Art, Technology, Engineering

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• Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Views, Skills

  "Computer Programming as an Art". Communications of the ACM, Volume 17, Issue 12, dl.acm.org. December 1974.

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• The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

  Robert Coveyou

  Learning, Numbers, Important

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• Software is like sex: It's better when it's free.

  Linus Torvalds

  Sex, Technology, Linux

  Attributed to Torvalds at 1996 FSF conference,

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• There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'.

  Edward Tufte

  Technology, Two, Computer

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• If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

  Brian Kernighan

  Clever, Writing, Debugging

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

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• You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.

  Bertrand Meyer

  Technology, Quality, Computer

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• Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Eleanor Roosevelt (1960). “You Learn by Living”, p.168, Westminster John Knox Press

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• It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.

  Steve McConnell

  Funny Inspirational, Errors, Coders

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• I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

  Douglas Adams

  Hands, Tasks, Computer

  Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine (2011). “Last Chance to See”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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• C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Quirky, Computer, Programming

  "Inventing Unix". Interview with Samuel K. Moore, Steven Cherry, spectrum.ieee.org. May 27, 2011.

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