Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users: the computer industry and the drug trade.
Edward Tufte
Good programmers never write what they can steal or borrow.
Jeff Atwood
The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there.
Gordon Bell
Professionalism has no place in art, and hacking is art. Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.
Jamie Zawinski
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
Alan J. Perlis
We kid ourselves if we think that the ratio of procedure to data in an active data-base system can be made arbitrarily small or even kept small.
Alan J. Perlis
... 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
Multi-threading is the art of screwing things up before, during or after something else.
Anonymous
Purely applicative languages are poorly applicable.
Alan J. Perlis
The Floppy Disk Icon means "save" for a whole generation of people who have never seen one.
Scott Hanselman