Programming languages Quotes · Page 3

Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.

— Niels Bohr

In English every word can be verbed.

— Alan Perlis

Experience comes from bad judgment.

— Mark Twain

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

— Alan Perlis

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

— Tom Van Vleck

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

— Alan Perlis

Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success.

— Tom DeMarco

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

— Alan Perlis

The C language combines all the power of assembly language with all the ease-of-use of assembly language.

— Mark Pearce

I have a pretty major problem with a language where one of the most common variables has the name $_

— Brian H. Hook

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

— R. Buckminster Fuller

A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as…

— Hal Abelson

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of…

— Tom Gilb

“It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use,…

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be…

— Tony Hoare

“The bitcoin transaction script language, called Script, is a Forth-like reverse-polish notation stack-based execution language. If that sounds like gibberish, you probably…

— Andreas M. Antonopoulos

I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really…

— Erik Naggum

In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning.

— Maimonides

People who passionately want to believe that the world is basically simple react to this with a fury that goes beyond what…

— Bjarne Stroustrup

When building a complex system, having crackerjack programmers (who can make any design work, even a bad one) can be a liability.…

— Richard E. Pattis

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we…

— Maurice Wilkes

It's [programming] the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist. There's an…

— Andy Hertzfeld

“Thinking back to old-time computer programming in the days before programming languages supported internationalization, we used to have to “internationalize” our code.…

— Ben Horowitz

“nobody seemed to think programming is a solved problem: most are still looking for a better way to write software, whether by…

— Peter Seibel

The discipline of programming is most like sorcery. Both use precise language to instruct inanimate objects to do our bidding. Small mistakes…

— Richard E. Pattis

We often treat children as if they're not very competent to do anything on their own. So we make them stop learning…

— Seymour Papert

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my…

— Bjarne Stroustrup

It has been discovered that C++ provides a remarkable facility for concealing the trival details of a program - such as where…

— Robert D Keppel

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

— Dennis Ritchie

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

— Amari Cooper

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

— Alan Perlis

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

— Larry Wall

Code should run as fast as necessary, but no faster; something important is always traded away to increase speed.

— Richard E. Pattis

You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain…

— Alan Perlis

The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.

— Andrei Codrescu

Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.

— Jim Horning

Job Control Language is the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose.

— Fred Brooks

XML is not a language in the sense of a programming language any more than sketches on a napkin are a language.

— Charles Simonyi

If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it.

— Richard E. Pattis

You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.

— Tony Hoare