Computer language Quotes · Page 2

Experience comes from bad judgment.

— Mark Twain

It is easier to port a shell than a shell script.

— Larry Wall

Successful software always gets changed.

— Fred Brooks

Question authority; but, raise your hand first.

— Alan Dershowitz

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's hard to eat spaghetti.

— David Allen

Learning is never done without errors and defeat.

— Vladimir Lenin

We teachers make the road, others will make the journey.

— Victor Hugo

A class, in Java, is where we teach objects how to behave.

— Richard E. Pattis

The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

— Dennis Ritchie

Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.

— Stan Kelly-Bootle

A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded.

— Darwin D. Martin

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

— Bjarne Stroustrup

I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

— Alan Kay

Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.

— Donald Knuth

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be…

— Leonardo da Vinci

You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.

— Richard R. Nelson

FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today:…

— Edsger Dijkstra

One purpose of CRC cards [a design tool] is to fail early, to fail often, and to fail inexpensively. It is a…

— Cay S. Horstmann

Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the…

— Harold Morowitz

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he…

— Jacques Barzun

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half…

— Philip Greenspun

Certainly, because the computer and computer language was still not as common as it is today. That's one of the reasons I…

— Bruce Boxleitner

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as…

— Brian Kernighan

One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John…

— Douglas Hofstadter

Text is linear; it is black and white; it doesn't zoom around the page in 3-D; it isn't intelligent by itself; in…

— Andrea diSessa

In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises…

— Tony Hoare

There is a race between the increasing complexity of the systems we build and our ability to develop intellectual tools for understanding…

— Leslie Lamport

When the words are fuzzy, the programmers reflexively retreat to the most precise method of articulation available: source code. Although there is…

— Amari Cooper

The only way for errors to occur in a program is by being put there by the author. No other mechanisms are…

— Hayley Mills

The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a…

— Fred Brooks

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— David Gelernter

Good code is its own best documentation.

— Steve McConnell

FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.

— Alan Perlis

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

— Richard E. Pattis

The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.

— Larry Wall

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.

— Robert Sewell

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

— Maurice Wilkes

A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

— Seymour Papert

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn…

— Jacques Barzun