Programming Quotes

653 quotes by 371 authors

A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use.… — Edsger Dijkstra
John von Neumann draws attention to what seemed to him a contrast. He remarked that for simple mechanisms, it is often easier to describe how… — Edsger Dijkstra
...our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed. For… — Edsger Dijkstra
We are all shaped by the tools we use, in particular: the formalisms we use shape our thinking habits, for better or for worse, and… — Edsger Dijkstra
Yes, I share your concern: how to program well -though a teachable topic- is hardly taught. The situation is similar to that in mathematics, where… — Edsger Dijkstra
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 fact, in terms… — Andrea diSessa
The first step in fixing a broken program is getting it to fail repeatably [on the simplest example possible]. — Tom Duff
The proof of a high education is the ability to speak about complex matters as simply as possible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
In those days [batch processing] programmers never even documented their programs, because it was assumed that nobody else would ever use them. Now, however, time-sharing… — Robert Fano
Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem. — Richard P. Feynman
When the problem [quantum chromodynamics] is finally solved, it will all be by imagination. Then there will be some big thing about the great way… — Richard P. Feynman
When a Caltech student asked the eminent cosmologist Michael Turner what his "bias" was in favoring one or another particle as a likely candidate to… — Richard P. Feynman
Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity. ... The… — David Gelernter
Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't. — David Gelernter
Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify… — David Gelernter
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end. — Khalil Gibran
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of which is the… — Tom Gilb
This attitude [the abstract method in mathematics] can be encapsulated in the following slogan: a mathematical object is what it does. — Timothy Gowers
Incidentally, when we're faced with a "prove or disprove," we're usually better off trying first to disprove with a counterexample, for two reasons: A disproof… — Ronald Graham
Programming is an explanatory activity. — Roman Harper

Who Wrote These Programming Quotes

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