Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
The difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice.
Anonymous
When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.
Richard Pattis
Good programmers invest the effort to learn how to use current practices. Not-so-good programmers just learn the buzzwords, and that’s been a software industry constant for a half century.
Boris Beizer
Three things should never be seen in the process of being created: laws, sausage, and software.
Anonymous
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
Alan J. Perlis
The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. Many software tasks have this characteristic because of the sequential nature of debugging.
Fred Brooks
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
E. W. Dijkstra
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written, and another for which it wasn't.
Alan J. Perlis
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
Anonymous
There is no programming language, no matter how structured, that will prevent programmers from making bad programs.
Larry Flon