Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity —in short: what mathematicians call "elegance"— are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.
Josh Billings
Three things should never be seen in the process of being created: laws, sausage, and software.
Anonymous
A programmer that is 10 times better than another will probably be happy making only 3 times as much.
Paul Graham
A programmer started to cuss
Anonymous
Because getting to sleep was a fuss
As he lay there in bed
Looping 'round in his head
was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
Brian Kernighan
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
The cybernetic exchange between man, computer and algorithm is like a game of musical chairs: The frantic search for balance always leaves one of the three standing ill at ease.
Alan J. Perlis
Users are a terrible thing. Systems would be infinitely more stable without them.
Michael T. Nygard.
Software is hard.
Donald Knuth