Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Charles Babbage
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If it's original, you'll have to ram it down their throats.
Howard Aiken
UNIX is user friendly. It just picks whom it wants to be friends with.
Anonymous
Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained.
Tao Of Programming
The use of a program to prove the 4-color theorem will not change mathematics - it merely demonstrates that the theorem, a challenge for a century, is probably not important to mathematics.
Alan J. Perlis
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought.
Maurice Wilkes
Any set of procedures, no matter how well intentioned or useful, that are too difficult to follow, will be circumvented.
Ravera's First Law of System Administration
The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
Nathaniel S Borenstein
A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people carrying razors.
Waldi Ravens