Programming Quotes

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. --Melvin E. Conway

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not. --Benjamin Brewster

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. --Edsger Dijkstra

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --Edsger Dijkstra

Java is to JavaScript what Car is to Carpet. --Chris Heilmann

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

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. --Edward V. Berard

It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code. --Bill Harlan

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better. --E.W. Djikstra

A common fallacy is to assume authors of incomprehensible code will be able to express themselves clearly in comments. --Kevlin Henney

The lesson is: Even if you know exactly what is going on in your system, measure performance, don't speculate. You'll learn something, and nine times out of ten, it won't be that you were right! --Ron Jeffries

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. --Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Debugging is like being the detective in a crime movie where you are also the murderer. --Filipe Fortes

Good code is its own best documentation. --Steve McConnell

I'm a victim of Developaralysis: the crippling sense that the software industry is evolving so fast that no one person can possibly keep up. --Jon Evans

What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months. --Fred Brooks

Design patterns should not be applied indiscriminately. Often they achieve flexibility and variability by introducing additional levels of indirection. A design pattern should only be applied when the flexibility it affords is actually needed. --Erich Gamma

The methodologies and best practices used to develop software can be applied successfully to any challenge in life. --Walter O'Brien

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. --Tom Cargill

Reducing a product's definition to a list of features and functions ignores the real opportunity - orchestrating technological capability to serve human needs and goals. --Alan Cooper

One of the best programming skills you can have is knowing when to walk away for awhile. --Oscar Godson

I think the lack of reusability comes in object-oriented languages, not in functional languages. Because the problem with object-oriented languages is they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle. --Joe Armstrong

You start digging in the code. The more you dig, the more stuff you turn up. Eventually you dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of. To avoid digging your own grave, refactoring must be done systematically. Eric Gamma

Do not use humans for jobs computers can do better - this is a waste of human energy and creativity, the only real resource on this planet, and demeans the human spirit. --J. Paul Morrison

Quality is the ally of schedule and cost, not their adversary. If we have to sacrifice quality to meet schedule, it's because we are doing the job wrong from the very beginning. --James A. Ward

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort. --John Ruskin

Good programmers use their brains, but good guidelines save us having to think out every case. --Francis Glassborow

Software and cathedrals are much the same. First we build them, then we pray. --Sam Redwine

I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years. --Tony Hoare

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. --Donald E. Knuth

Developers are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame, frequently with the same result. --Neal Ford

Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. --Alan Turing

Don't be (too) clever. My point was to discourage overly clever code because 'clever code' is hard to write, easy to get wrong, harder to maintain, and often no faster than simpler alternatives because it can be hard to optimize. --Bjarne Stroustrup

The value of a prototype is in the education it gives you, not in the code itself. --Alan Cooper

Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes. --Richard Hamming

The code you write makes you a programmer. The code you delete makes you a good one. The code you don't have to write makes you a great one. --Mario Fusco

The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony Number 9. -Erwin Dieterich

If you can get today’s work done today, but you do it in such a way that you can’t possibly get tomorrow’s work done tomorrow, then you lose. --Martin Fowler

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents. --Nathaniel S. Borenstein

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. --Emo Philips