#programming quotes

As soon as we started programming, we found out to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical about [the goto statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!

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.

First do it, then do it right, then do it fast.

At any particular point in time, the features provided by our programming languages reflect our understanding of software and programming.

Good programming is good writing.

Planning is alWork when you’re fresh; stop when you’re tired.

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treament.

For the time being, programming is a consumer job, assembly line coding is the norm, and what little exciting stuff is being performed is not going to make it compared to the mass-marketed cräp sold by those who think they can surf on the previous half-century's worth of inventions forever.

Documentation is the castor oil of programming.

There is nothing in the programming field more despicable than an undocumented program.

The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.

The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic.

Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California.

In programming, the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

If debugging is the process of removing bugs. Then programming must be the process of putting them in.

First, solve the problem. Then, write the code.

Good programming is 99% sweat and 1% coffee.

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

In carpentry you measure twice and cut once. In software development you never measure and make cuts until you run out of time.

Programming is just saying “I have a meeting in an hour so better not start on this yet” to yourself until you die.

Programming uses head and gut.

A program is like a poem: you cannot write a poem without writing it.

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.

The older I get, the more I believe that the only way to become a better programmer is by not programming.

It's a lot easier to talk about code than it is to write code.

The craft of programming begins with empathy, not formatting or languages or tools or algorithms or data structures.

Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file.

This is essentially what a program was, a love letter from the programmer to the hardware, full of the intimate details known only to partners in an affair.

The best programs are the ones written when the programmer is supposed to be working on something else.

In the end, regardless of where you are on the development hierarchy, keep coding. It’s where you’re most valuable.

Programming is not easy like Sunday morning, it is silent poetry.

One of the best programming skills you can have is knowing when to walk away for awhile.

Blame the implementation, not the technique.