Quotes About Programming

Dependent Functions. If one function calls another, they should be vertically close, and the caller should be above the callee, if at all possible.

Programming is so hard, in fact, that it is beyond the capability of one person to do it well. No matter how skilled you are, you will certainly benefit from another programmer's thoughts and ideas.

Structured programming forces us to recursively decompose a program into a set of small provable functions. We can then use tests to try to prove those small provable functions incorrect. If such tests fail to prove incorrectness, then we deem the functions to be correct enough for our purposes.

Programming is an act of creation. When we write code we are creating something out of nothing. We are boldly imposing order upon chaos.

Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.

So if you want to go fast, if you want to get done quickly, if you want your code to be easy to write, make it easy to read.

If you're good at the debugger it means you spent a lot of time debugging. I don't want you to be good at the debugger.

I'm a programmer. I like programming. And the best way I've found to have a positive impact on code is to write it.

One difference between a smart programmer and a professional programmer is that the professional understands that clarity is king. Professionals use their powers for good and write code that others can understand.

Don't Use a Comment When You Can Use a Function or a Variable

Thus, adult behavior produces persistent molecular brain changes in offspring, "programming" them to be likely to replicate that distinctive behavior in adulthood.76

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

How many software developers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, it's a hardware problem.

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.

Computer Science is a science of abstraction -creating the right model for a problem and devising the appropriate mechanizable techniques to solve it.

I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

It is a real service to humanity and the world to be a good programmer, particularly if you design great products. You make is easier for everybody, everybody has less headaches.

I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

Excusing bad programming is a shooting offence, no matter what the circumstances.

Most of the programmers in ten years will be us, and we won't get much smarter.

A number of people who are interested in computers in this lifetime programmed computers in Atlantis.

I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

Trees sprout up just about everywhere in computer science.