Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
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
Think of all the psychic energy expended in seeking a fundamental distinction between "algorithm" and "program".
Alan J. Perlis
One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
Mark Ardis
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.
Alan J. Perlis
The greatest performance improvement of all is when a system goes from not-working to working.
John Ousterhout
Yes, sometimes Perl looks like line noise to the uninitiated, but to the seasoned Perl programmer, it looks like checksummed line noise with a mission in life.
Randal Schwartz
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
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
Alan J. Perlis
Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Anonymous
One does not learn computing by using a hand calculator, but one can forget arithmetic.
Alan J. Perlis