Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
Within a computer natural language is unnatural.
Alan J. Perlis
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Alan J. Perlis
What happens in the mind of a fine artist is nothing different from that going on in the mind of an expert coder. Both see and thrive in the quintessential nature of patterns.
Lawrence Mucheka
APL, I believe, can only be learned by writing one-liners–only by seeing in a sense, what you can compress into a line.
Alan J Perlis
Engineering is the art of doing with one dollar what any damn fool can do with two.
From Space Systems Failures by David M. Harland and Ralph D. Lorenz
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
There's a fine line between being on the leading edge and being in the lunatic fringe.
Frank Armstrong
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.
Bjarne Stroustrup
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Sir Arthur C Clarke
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Alan J. Perlis