#languages quotes

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.

Programming languages, like pizzas, come in too sizes; too big and too small.

There are only two kinds of languages: the kind everybody bitches about, and the kind nobody uses.

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.

There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

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

It would be nice if products and programming languages were designed to have only good parts.

JavaScript is the only language that I’m aware of that people feel they don’t need to learn before they start using it.

If there is a feature of a language that is sometimes problematic, and if it can be replaced with another feature that is more reliable, then always use the more reliable feature.

And the reason these things take a generation is because ultimately we do not change people's minds. We have to wait for the previous generation to retire or die before we can get critical mass on the next idea. So it's like we look around: “Are they gone?”

A most important, but also most elusive, aspect of any tool is its influence on the habits of those who train themselves in its use. If the tool is a programming language this influence is, whether we like it or not, an influence on our thinking habits.

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.

Perl: The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.

All programming languages are shit. But the good ones fertilize your mind.

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.

Languages that try to disallow idiocy become themselves idiotic.