Computer Programmers Quotes

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.

Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only too sizes; too big and too small.

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.

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.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability.

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

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

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs.

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity.

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.

The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.

I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

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.

One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

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.

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

When in doubt, use brute force.

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking. On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the only real limitation.

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems.

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

In fact, there are autism clusters, you know, around some of the big tech centers. You take two socially awkward computer programmers and put them together, that can kind of concentrate the autistic genes.

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

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.

This is how many people become artists, musicians, writers, computer programmers, record-holding athletes, scientists... by spending time alone practicing what they love.

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.

Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.

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.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.