Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
Dave Parnas
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
Alan J. Perlis
Inside every complex program is a simple program trying to get out.
Anonymous
What you’ve described, “The bottleneck in writing code isn’t in the writing of the code, it’s in understanding and conceptualising what needs to be done,” is common to all highly abstract programming languages. Writing Haskell, for example, involves an hour of meditation followed by the emission of a fold expression.
Jonathan Feinberg
It is not a language's weakness but its strengths that control the gradient of its change: Alas, a language never escapes its embryonic sac.
Alan J. Perlis
Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
Eric Raymond
In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.
From SICP
It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code.
Anonymous
As soon as you agree on the number of spaces for indentation, no-one argues for tabs.
Alvar Lumberg
Software with no bugs is obsolete.
Anonymous