Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
No code is faster than no code.
Anonymous
The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying.
John Carmack on software patents
You think you know when you can learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program.
Alan J. Perlis
The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.
Grady Booch
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive down below.
John Dryden
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
Alan J. Perlis
FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
E. W. Dijkstra
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Donald Knuth
I (...) am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.
Douglas Adams
A good programmer looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Anonymous