Programming Quotes - Page 13

• Usually its users discover sooner or later that their program does not deliver all the desired results, or worse, that the results requested were not the ones really needed.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Doe, Program, Results

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• The Internet is corporations all the way down.

  Ethan Zuckerman

  Corporations, Way, Internet

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• XML is not a language in the sense of a programming language any more than sketches on a napkin are a language.

  Charles Simonyi

  Napkins, Language, Computer

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• Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.

  Dennis Ritchie

  Years, Linux, Research

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• In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages.

  Guido van Rossum

  Python, Focus, Example

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• The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.

  Brian Kernighan

  Tools, Debugging, Print

  "Unix for Beginners". Paper by Brian Kernighan, 1979.

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• In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Success, Business, Military

  Quoted in Richard Nixon, Six Crises (1962)

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• In the information age, the barriers [to entry into programming] just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

  John Carmack

  Dedication, Self, Rivers

  "Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture". Book by David Kushner, May 6, 2003.

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

  Gordon Bell

  Engineering, Software, Simplicity In Design

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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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• The proof of a high education is the ability to speak about complex matters as simply as possible.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Learning, Matter, Speak

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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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• 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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• One purpose of CRC cards [a design tool] is to fail early, to fail often, and to fail inexpensively. It is a lot cheaper to tear up a bunch of cards that it would be to reorganize a large amount of source code.

  Cay S. Horstmann

  Learning, Design, Tears

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• Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind, I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.

  Brian Kernighan

  Sorry, Learning, Mind

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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 think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

  Antoine Lavoisier

  Art, Learning, Simple

  "Elements of Chemistry". Book by Antoine Lavoisier, 1790.

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• In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning.

  Maimonides

  Learning, Simple, Simplify

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• Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.

  Harold Morowitz

  Learning, Character, Technique

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• You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.

  Richard R. Nelson

  Learning, Space, Honor

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• Code should run as fast as necessary, but no faster; something important is always traded away to increase speed.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Running, Learning, Important

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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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