Best programming and hacker quotes. Ever.
Curated by fellow hackers Jarmo Pertman & Andri Möll
Human beings are not accustomed to being perfect, and few areas of human activity demand it. Adjusting to the requirement for perfection is, I think, the most difficult part of learning to program.
Anonymous
One who works with their hands is a laborer.
Anonymous
One who works with their hands and their mind is a craftsman.
One who works with their hands, mind and heart is an artist.
Tell me what you need and I'll tell you how to get along without it.
Anonymous
Arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
Alan Kay
If you can build it, your users can break it.
Anonymous
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written, and another for which it wasn't.
Alan J. Perlis
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
The best writing is rewriting.
E. B. White
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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