Programming Quotes - Page 15

• The agendas on the management side of the table now are not in sync like they used to be because you have vastly different entities supplying programming to networks.

  Dick Wolf

  Different, Agendas, Tables

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• Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.

  Steve Wozniak

  Technology, Computer, Window

  "How Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Gets Things Done". Interview with Kevin Purdy, lifehacker.com. April 22, 2009.

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• What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.

  Steve Wozniak

  Running, Games, Play

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• The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Technology, Thinking, Swim

  Interview with Jack Schofield, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2002.

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• That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

  Larry Niven

  Hate, Technology, Thinking

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• Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Learning, Mastery, Tongue

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

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• Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

  Linus Torvalds

  Coders, Linux, Show Me

  Linux kernel mailing list message, lkml.org. August 25, 2000.

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• The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Witty, Humorous, Teaching

  "How do we tell truths that might hurt?" by Edsger Dijkstra, June 18, 1975.

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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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• A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

  Bill Gates

  Technology, Average, Computer

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• The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry.

  Henry Petroski

  Technology, Achievement, Gains

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• As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when 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, Technology, Coders

  "The Design and Use of the EDSAC". Lecture delivered at the Digital Computer Museum, September 23, 1979.

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• Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.

  Ray Ozzie

  Frustration, Technology, Challenges

  "Burden of the years weighs on Windows" by Steve Lohr and John Markoff, www.nytimes.com. March 26, 2006.

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• If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.

  Robert Sewell

  Java, Garbage, Execution

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• Gates is the ultimate programming machine. He believes everything can be defined, examined, reduced to essentials, and rearranged into a logical sequence that will achieve a particular goal.

  Stewart Alsop II

  Believe, Science, Technology

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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

  Alan Kay

  Mind, Term, Computer Language

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

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• Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success.

  Tom DeMarco

  Children, Analysis, Damage

  Tom DeMarco (1978). “Structured analysis and system specification”, Yourdon Press

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• People think that computer science is the art of geniuses but the actual reality is the opposite, just many people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini stones.

  Donald Knuth

  Art, Wall, Reality

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• Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.

  John Carmack

  Soul, Levels, Computer

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• 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.

  John Carmack

  Fighting, Simplicity, Expansion

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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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• Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

  Rick Cook

  Winning, Technology, Race

  "The Wizardry Compiled". Book by Rick Cook, 1989.

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• Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

  Brian Kernighan

  Inspirational, Funny, Smart

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• But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.

  Niklaus Wirth

  Design, Contemplation, Program

  "Program Development by Stepwise Refinement". Communications of the ACM, Vol. 14, No. 4, sunnyday.mit.edu. April 1971.

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