Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
Mark Ardis
Three things should never be seen in the process of being created: laws, sausage, and software.
Anonymous
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
Documentation is like sex. When it's good, it's fantastic. When it's bad, it's still better than nothing.
Anonymous
Before software should be reusable, it should be usable.
Ralph Johnson
If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter how fast it doesn't work.
Ravera's observation on premature optimization
If architects built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
Gerald Weinberg
Wherever there is modularity there is the potential for misunderstanding: Hiding information implies a need to check communication.
Alan J. Perlis
Good programmers never write what they can steal or borrow.
Jeff Atwood
Computation has made the tree flower.
Alan J. Perlis