Programming Quotes

653 quotes by 371 authors

To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program. — Alan Perlis
You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can… — Alan Perlis
Fancy algorithms are slow when N is small, and N is usually small. — Rosamund Pike
Fancy optimizers have fancy bugs. — Rosamund Pike
Thinking and spoken discourse are the same thing, except that what we call thinking is, precisely, the inward dialogue carried on by the mind with… — Plato
Gates has always understood Moore's Law better than anyone else in the industry. If you can make something run at all, get it out there… — Jerry Pournelle
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (e.g., given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the… — Eric S. Raymond
Don't you hate code that's not properly indented? Making it [indenting] part of the syntax guarantees that all code is properly indented. — Guido van Rossum
Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are… — Roger Schank
There is one very good reason to learn programming, but it has nothing to do with preparing for high-tech careers or with making sure one… — Roger Schank
Microsoft knows that reliable software is not cost effective. According to studies, 90% to 95% of all bugs are harmless. They're never discovered by users,… — Bruce Schneier
And simple truth miscalled simplicity — William Shakespeare
Learning results from what the student does and thinks, and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by… — Herbert Simon
Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them… — Herbert Simon
EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset,… — Richard Stallman
It is my firm belief that all successful languages are grown and not merely designed from first principles — Bjarne Stroustrup
In engineering, as in other creative arts, we must learn to do analysis to support our efforts in synthesis. One cannot build a beautiful and… — Gerald Jay Sussman
Once you succeed in writing the programs for [these] complicated algorithms, they usually run extremely fast. The computer doesn't need to understand the algorithm, its… — Robert Tarjan
He [John von Neumann] had the invaluable faculty of being able to take the most difficult problem and separate it into its components, whereupon everything… — Stanislaw Ulam
By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the… — Alfred North Whitehead

Who Wrote These Programming Quotes

371 authors contributed a total of 653 Programming Quotes, led by these top contributors: