Explore the wonderful quotes under this tag
Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.
Sep 10, 2025
[Though computer science is a fairly new discipline, it is predominantly based on the Cartesian world view. As Edsgar W. Dijkstra has pointed out] A scientific discipline emerges with the - usually rather slow! - discovery of which aspects can be meaningfully 'studied' in isolation for the sake of their own consistency.
I considered law and math. My Dad was a lawyer. I think though I would have ended up in physics if I didn't end up in computer science.
I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.
My undergraduate work was in computer science and economics. It just happened to be at that time when 34 percent of computer-science majors were women. We didn't realize it was at the peak at the time.
If you seek to develop the mind fully, for the enlightenment process, you will benefit if your career is related to computer science, law, medicine, or the arts.
Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.
To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.
There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.
A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable.
The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
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.
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.
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
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.
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
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.
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
Consciousness, like a complex system of software, has thousands of levels of nested, self-accessing subroutines
Computer science doesn't know how to build complex systems that work reliably. This has been a well-understood problem since the very beginning of programmable computers.
I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.
Remember how quickly our field [computer science] changes. That's why you want to focus on learning things that don't change: how to work well with other people, how to carefully assess a client's real - as opposed to perceived - needs, and things like that.
One finds limits by pushing them.
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.
Computer science … jobs should be way more interesting than even going to Wall Street or being a lawyer--or, I can argue, than anything but perhaps biology, and there it's just a tie.
Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.
But biology and computer science - life and computation - are related. I am confident that at their interface great discoveries await those who seek them.
I was never as focused in math, science, computer science, etcetera, as the people who were best at it. I wanted to create amazing screensavers that did beautiful visualizations of music. It's like, "Oh, I have to learn computer science to do that."
My background, I really am a computer hacker. I've studied computer science, I work in computer security. I'm not an actively a hacker, I'm an executive but I understand the mindset of changing a system to get the outcome that you want. It turns out to make the coffee, the problem is actually how the beans get turn into green coffee. That's where most of the problems happen.
I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.
Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
The rise of Google, the rise of Facebook, the rise of Apple, I think are proof that there is a place for computer science as something that solves problems that people face every day.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Know what you're talking about.
Know what you are talking about.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.