Quotes About Programming

Containment is the simple idea that a class contains a primitive data element or object. A lot more is written about inheritance than about containment, but that's because inheritance is more tricky and error-prone, not because it's better. Containment is the work-horse technique in object-oriented programming.

developers' estimates tend to have an optimism factor of 20 to 30 percent

Even if you do a few things right, such as making high use of modern programming practices, you might still make a mistake that nullifies your productivity gains.

One indication that a routine needs to be broken out of another routine is deep nesting of an inner loop or a conditional. Reduce the containing routine's complexity by pulling the nested part out and putting it into its own routine.

If a class contains more than about seven data members, consider whether the class should be decomposed into multiple smaller classes (Riel 1996). You might err more toward the high end of 7±2 if the data members are primitive data types like integers and strings, more toward the lower end of 7±2 if the data members are complex objects.

Implement is a through public inheritance. When a programmer decides to create a new class by inheriting from an existing class, that programmer is saying that the new class is a more specialized version of the older class. The base class sets expectations about how the derived class will operate and imposes constraints on how the derived class can operate (Meyers 1998).

There is no code so big, twisted, or complex that maintenance can't make it worse.

The underlying message of all these rules is that inheritance tends to work against the primary technical imperative you have as a programmer, which is to manage complexity. For the sake of controlling complexity, you should maintain a heavy bias against inheritance.

One key to successful programming is avoiding arbitrary variations so that your brain can be free to focus on the variations that are really needed.

Programmers who program into a language first decide what thoughts they want to express, and then they determine how to express those thoughts using the tools provided by their specific language.

If you can't figure out how to use a class based solely on its interface documentation, the right response is not to pull up the source code and look at the implementation. That's good initiative but bad judgment. The right response is to contact the author of the class and say I can't figure out how to use this class.

Programming assignments in school are devised to move you in a beeline from beginning to end. You'd probably want to tar and feather a teacher who gave you a programming assignment, then changed the assignment as soon as you finished the design, and then changed it again just as you were about to turn in the completed program. But that very process is an everyday reality in professional programming.

Dijkstra pointed out that no one's skull is really big enough to contain a modern computer program (Dijkstra 1972), which means that we as software developers shouldn't try to cram whole programs into our skulls at once; we should try to organize our programs in such a way that we can safely focus on one part of it at a time.

Be sure that the names you choose favor read-time convenience over write-time convenience.

Because successful programming depends on minimizing complexity, a skilled programmer will build in as much flexibility as needed to meet the software's requirements but will not add flexibility—and related complexity—beyond what's required.

Quicksort a few times, but what are the odds that your custom version will be fully correct on the first try?

Years of cultural programming have taught us to love some animals while eating others, when in all reality, all animals are sentient beings with the capacity to feel, both physically and emotionally.

Fundamental AI Technologies" in Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming by Daniel Sánchez-Crespo Dalmau (Dalmau, 2004).

I'd programmed and dropped in a few back-to-back flicks starring Gamera, my favorite giant flying turtle.

The vast wasteland of television programming had finally reached its zenith, and the average person was no longer limited to fifteen minutes of fame.

The overall effect of the Kid Vid rules has been to force networks to prioritize less popular content. Some of this programming attracts reliable viewership among older children, but younger children largely aren't watching.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

If you really want to be a good archaeologist, you have to understand ancient DNA; you have to understand chemical analysis to figure out the composition of ancient pots. You have to be able to study human remains. You need to be able to do computer processing and, in some cases, computer programming.

I feel like, with drum programming, the way I used to do it, I'd think of how somebody would play these drum patterns and then try to replicate that through programming. It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different style.