Programming Quotes

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.

I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?

For many phenomena, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes.

Talk is cheap. Show me the code.

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.

Code never lies, comments sometimes do.

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

Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it.

C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success.

When in doubt, leave it out.

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.

There's nothing in computing that can't be broken by another level of indirection.

Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container.

The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.

Ethernet always wins.

An API that isn't comprehensible isn't usable.

Avoiding complexity reduces bugs.

I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end.

Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning.

Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.

The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.

There was something amazingly enticing about programming.

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

If you think something is impossible, don't disturb the person who is doing it!

The greatest single programming language ever designed

In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning.

When in doubt, use brute force.

Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility.

I made up the term "object-oriented," and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.

If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there.

Invention is arrived at by intelligent stumbling.

The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change.

Don't document bad code - rewrite it.

Most programming languages contain good parts and bad parts. I discovered that I could be better programmer by using only the good parts and avoiding the bad parts.

Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.

Never hesitate to ask a lesser person.

You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself.

Software sucks because users demand it to.

If you don’t take responsibility for programming yourself, then someone else will.

Programming is usually taught by examples.

Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick

A good threat is worth a thousand tests.