Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Anonymous
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
Alan J. Perlis
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
Alan J. Perlis
If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
Anonymous
So many good ideas are never heard from again once they embark in a voyage on the semantic gulf.
Alan J. Perlis
An ideal world is left as an exercise to the reader.
From Paul Graham's "On Lisp"
Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great things, or even good things, but new things.
McKenzie Wark in "A hacker Manifesto":02
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Alan J. Perlis
My assertion that we can do better with computer languages is a persistent belief and fond hope, but you'll note I don't actually claim to be either rational or right. Except when it's convenient.
Larry Wall