Quotes on programming
The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state.
Osterhout, J.
Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.
Mills, Harlan
When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.
Pattis, Richard
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Perlis, Alan J.
We don't manage our time as well as we manage our space. There's an overhead of starting and an overhead of stopping a project because you kind of lose your momentum. And you've got to bracket and put aside all the things you're already doing. So you need reasonably large blocks of uninterrupted time if you're going to be successful at doing some of these things. That's why hackers tend to stay up late. If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.
Joy, Bill
Good code is its own best documentation. As you're about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn't needed?"
McConnell, Steve
Programs for sale: fast, reliable, cheap - choose two.
Unknown, Author
When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.
Unknown, Author
What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself.
Adams, Douglas
Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only two sizes: too big and too small.
Pattis, Richard
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations. They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them "operators" or "programmers."
Drucker, Peter F.
It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.
Unknown, Author
He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does so as an adult has no brain.
Moore, John
Ready, fire, aim: the fast approach to software development. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim: the slow approach to software development.
Unknown, Author
Version 1 of any software is full of bugs. Version 2 fixes all the bugs and is great. Version 3 adds all the things users ask for, but hides all the great stuff in Version 2.
Blechman, Fred
You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.
Hoare, C.A.R.
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Hoare, C.A.R.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Perlis, Alan J.
From a programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request.
Williams, Peter