Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H L Mencken
In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
One can only display complex information in the mind. Like seeing, movement or flow or alteration of view is more important than the static picture, no matter how lovely.
Alan J. Perlis
Software is under a constant tension. Being symbolic it is arbitrarily perfectible; but also it is arbitrarily changeable.
Alan J. Perlis
And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is.
Larry Wall
I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.
Tony (C.A.R.) Hoare
... what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names — otherwise you would be selling nothing — like "Structured Analysis and Design", "Software Engineering", "Maturity Models", "Management Information Systems", "Integrated Project Support Environments" "Object Orientation" and "Business Process Re-engineering" (the latter three being known as IPSE, OO and BPR, respectively).
Edsger W. Dijkstra
...basically, avoid comments. If your code needs a comment to be understood, it would be better to rewrite it so it's easier to understand.
Rob Pike
A fool with a tool is still a fool.
Anonymous
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
E. W. Dijkstra