Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.

Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll

  • Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.

    Alan J. Perlis

  • To most Java developers, Ruby/Rails is like a mistress. Ruby/Rails is young, new, and exciting; but eventually we go back to old faithful, dependable, and employable Java with some new tricks and idioms and we are the better programmer for it.

    Juixe TechKnow

  • Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.

    Edward V Berard

  • The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.

    Gordon Bell

  • I have found that the reason a lot of people are interested in artificial intelligence is the same reason a lot of people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one.

    David Parnas

  • Every program is a part of some other program and rarely fits.

    Alan J. Perlis

  • It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only communication coin we can count on.

    Alan J. Perlis

  • You can't communicate complexity, only an awareness of it.

    Alan J. Perlis

  • It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

    E. W. Dijkstra

  • When in doubt, leave it out.

    Joshua Bloch

  • Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa.

    Alan J. Perlis