Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations…. They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them “operators” or “programmers.” – Peter F. Drucker
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. – Author Unknown
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. – Martin Golding
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you are as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? – Brian Kernighan
[A]nd then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match. – Bill Bryson
A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. – Doug Linder
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. – Martin Fowler
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. – Rich Kulawiec
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. – Brian Kernighan
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly equivalent to herding cats. – The Washington Post Magazine, 9 June 1985
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. – Edsger Dijkstra
If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, e.g., with no external memory aids, you are not ready to code it. – Richard Pattis
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. – Nathaniel S. Borenstein
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. – C.A.R. Hoare, quoted by Donald Knuth
Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes. – Harlan Mills
Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary. – Author Unknown
Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only two sizes: too big and too small. – Richard Pattis
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. – Rich Cook
