Category: Programming Quotes SMS

Good code is its own best documentation.  As you’re about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn’t needed?"  ~Steve McConnell

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

At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly equivalent to herding cats.  ~The Washington Post Magazine, 9 June 1985

He who hasn’t hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart.  He who does so as an adult has no brain.  ~John Moore

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

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.  That forces you to sort it out in your own mind.  And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more […]

It’s easy to cry "bug" when the truth is that you’ve got a complex system and sometimes it takes a while to get all the components to co-exist peacefully.  ~Doug Vargas

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.  ~Author Unknown

The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state.  ~J. Osterhout

Don’t argue with people who write with digital ink and pay by the kilowatt-hour.  ~Don Rittner

Version 1 of any software is full of bugs.  Version 2 fixes all the bugs and is great.  Version 3 adds all the things users ask for, but hides all the great stuff in Version 2.  ~Fred BlechmanDCQ

I really hate this darn machine; I wish that they would sell it. It won’t do what I want it to, but only what I tell it. ~Author Unknown

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

[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

It’s the only job I can think of where I get to be both an engineer and an artist.  There’s an incredible, rigorous, technical element to it, which I like because you have to do very precise thinking.  On the other hand, it has a wildly creative side where the boundaries of imagination are the […]

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

Beta.  Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it’s released.  Beta is Latin for "still doesn’t work."  ~Author Unknown

Ready, fire, aim:  the fast approach to software development.  Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim:  the slow approach to software development.  ~Author Unknown

Programmer – an organism that turns coffee into software.  ~Author Unknown

When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.  ~Author Unknown

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.  ~Doug Linder

Programming is like sex.  One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.  ~Michael Sinz

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.  ~Alan J. Perlis

There does not now, nor will there ever exist, a programming language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs.  ~Lawrence Flon

Program, n.  A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one’s input into error messages; v. tr. To engage in a pastime similar to banging one’s head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.  ~Author Unknown

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.  ~Alan J. Perlis

When you catch bugs early, you also get fewer compound bugs.  Compound bugs are two separate bugs that interact:  you trip going downstairs, and when you reach for the handrail it comes off in your hand.  ~Paul Graham, "The Other Road Ahead," 2001

The only way for errors to occur in a program is by being put there by the author.  No other mechanisms are known.  Programs can’t acquire bugs by sitting around with other buggy programs.  ~Harlan Mills

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.  Good programmers write code that humans can understand.  ~Martin Fowler