Programming Languages Quotes - Page 5

• The best is the enemy of the good.

  Voltaire

  Inspirational, Military, Learning

  Letter to Duc de Richelieu, 18 June 1744. Although this saying is now associated with Voltaire, he is obviously quoting an Italian proverb here. The French form, which he used later, is Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

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• C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Two, Cups, Dixie

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• Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only too sizes; too big and too small.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Learning, Size, Language

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

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Thinking, Profound, Tools

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• Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set?

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Powerful, Code Quality, Bells

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

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• We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Appreciation, Jobs, Humble

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• When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

  Alan Perlis

  Funny Inspirational, Giving, Needs

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• The discipline of programming is most like sorcery. Both use precise language to instruct inanimate objects to do our bidding. Small mistakes in programs or spells can lead to completely unforseen behavior: e.g., see the story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Neither study is easy: "...her [Galinda's] early appetite for sorcery had waned once she'd heard what a grind it was to learn spells and, worse, to understand them." from the book "Wicked" by G. Maguire.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Mistake, Book, Learning

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• A data structure is just a stupid programming language.

  Bill Gosper

  Stupid, Data, Language

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• In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

  Alan Perlis

  Language, Programming

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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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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• 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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• 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.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Writing, Baghdad, Ethics

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• A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

  Alan Perlis

  Attention, Levels, Language

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17 (9), pp. 7-13, pu.inf.uni-tuebingen.de. September 1982.

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• I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

  Alan Kay

  Mind, Programming, Term

  "The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet". Alan Kay's keynote at OOPSLA conference, www.youtube.com. 1997.

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• SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.

  Philip Greenspun

  Thinking, Language, Haskell

  "How long is the average Internet discussion forum posting?". Philip Greenspun's Weblog, blogs.harvard.edu. March 7, 2005.

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• A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

  Seymour Papert

  Learning, Thinking, Favors

  "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas". Book by Seymour Papert, 1980.

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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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• The problem with using C++ ... is that there's already a strong tendency in the language to require you to know everything before you can do anything.

  Larry Wall

  Strong, Language, Problem

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• The greatest single programming language ever designed

  Alan Kay

  Language, Programming, Lisp

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• A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Thinking, Language

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• APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Mistake, Perfection, Language

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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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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• More than the act of testing, the act of designing tests is one of the best bug preventers known.

  Boris Beizer

  Design, Tests, Bugs

  Boris Beizer (1990). “Software Testing Techniques”, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company

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• What I cannot create, I do not understand.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Inspiring, Education, Learning

  Quoted in James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992)

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