Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
It takes an intelligent person to build something complex; it takes a genius to build something simple.
Anonymous
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught not to. So it is with great programmers.
Alan J. Perlis
Owning a computer without programming is like having a kitchen and using only the microwave oven.
Charles Petzold
Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.
Anonymous
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
[The common definition of estimate is] "An estimate is the most optimistic prediction that has a non-zero probability of coming true" . . .
Tom DeMarco
Accepting this definition leads irrevocably toward a method called what's-the-earliest- date-by-which-you-can't-prove-you-won't-be- finished estimating.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical?
Alan J. Perlis
[Perl] combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript.
Jamie Zawinski
If you can build it, your users can break it.
Anonymous