Programming Quotes - Page 17

• There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

  Alan Perlis

  Writing, Errors, Two

  "Epigrams on Programming". ACM "SIGPLAN" Notices 17 (9), (pp. 7-13), September 1982.

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• Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Hard Work, Discipline, Simplicity

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• Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

  Fred Brooks

  Comfort, Arbitrary, Amusing

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Thinking, Mechanic, Quantum

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• It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

  Albert Einstein

  Courage, Moving, Simple

  "Small is Beautiful". The Radical Humanist, Vol. 37, No. 5, (p. 22), August 1973.

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• When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Beauty, Creativity, Thinking

  "The Universal Book of Mathematics". Book by David Darling, p. 34, November 8, 2004.

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• A data structure is just a stupid programming language.

  Bill Gosper

  Stupid, Data, Language

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• A program that produces incorrect results twice as fast is infinitely slower.

  John Ousterhout

  Program, Produce, Results

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• It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done.

  Erik Naggum

  Tools, Done, Rewards

  "Can lisp do what perl does easily?". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. March 28, 2000.

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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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• I have found that the reason a lot of people are interested in artificial intelligence is the same reason a lot of people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one.

  David Parnas

  People, Missing, Reason

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• Comparing to another activity is useful if it helps you formulate questions, it's dangerous when you use it to justify answers.

  Martin Fowler

  Use, Answers, Helping

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• The primary duty of an exception handler is to get the error out of the lap of the programmer and into the surprised face of the user. Provided you keep this cardinal rule in mind, you can't go far wrong.

  Verity Stob

  Errors, Mind, Lap

  "Catch as Catch Can". www.theregister.co.uk. January 11, 2006.

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• Complexity has nothing to do with intelligence, simplicity does.

  Lawrence Bossidy

  Simplicity, Doe, Complexity

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• When in doubt, leave it out.

  Joshua Bloch

  Doubt, When In Doubt

  "Joshua Bloch: A conversation about design". Interview with Bill Venners, www.javaworld.com. January 4, 2002.

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• Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

  Bjarne Stroustrup

  Design, Forget, Lost

  Bjarne Stroustrup (2000). “The C++ Programming Language”, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.

  Kent Beck

  Responsibility, Slacker, Testing

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• A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate.

  Rob Pike

  Smart, Educate, Terminal

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• Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.

  Stan Kelly-Bootle

  Funny Inspirational, Technology, Compromise

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• A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do

  Dennis Ritchie

  Simplicity, Language, Computer

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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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• 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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• As a programmer, it is your job to put yourself out of business. What you do today can be automated tomorrow.

  Douglas McIlroy

  Jobs, Today, Tomorrow

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• When teaching a rapidly changing technology, perspective is more important than content.

  Richard E. Pattis

  Teaching, Learning, Technology

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• When building a complex system, having crackerjack programmers (who can make any design work, even a bad one) can be a liability. The result, after lots of effort, is a working system that cannot be easily maintained or upgraded. Good -but not great- programmers would fail early, causing a realization that the system must be redesigned, and then reimplemented. The extra cost is paid once, early in the system's cycle (when it is cheap), instead of repeatedly paid late in the system's cycle (when it is more expensive).

  Richard E. Pattis

  Learning, Design Work, Effort

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