Programmer Quotes

By understanding a machine-oriented language, the programmer will tend to use a much more efficient method; it is much closer to reality. (Donald Knuth)
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses. View quote
Alan Perlis
The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. View quote
Larry Wall
Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer. View quote
Marvin Minsky
The best way to prepare to be a programmer is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system. View quote
Bill Gates
Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for 'the average programmer', you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later. View quote
John D. Carmack
It always helps to be a good programmer. It is important to like computers and to be able to think of things people would want to do with their computers. View quote
Bill Budge
The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large. View quote
Donald Knuth
Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot. View quote
Eric S. Raymond
Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.) (Charles Stross)
Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer. View quote
Edsger W. Dijkstra
The choice of approaches could be made the responsibility of the programmer. View quote
Larry Wall
... an initial underscore already conveys strong feelings of magicalness to a C programmer. View quote
Larry Wall
The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i. e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture. View quote
Fred Brooks
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous. View quote
Bjarne Stroustrup
Maybe "just one little global variable" isn't too unmanageable, but that style leads to code that is useless except to its original programmer. View quote
Bjarne Stroustrup
The use of the high level language made each programmer a factor of 5 to 10 more productive in a coding sense and more concerned with the semantics than the syntax of modules. View quote
Fernando J. Corbató
It is, therefore, possible to extend a partially specified interpretation to a complete interpretation, without loss of verifiability, [...] This fact offers the possibility of automatic verification of programs, the programmer merely tagging entrances and one edge in each innermost loop. (Robert Floyd)
I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. View quote
Kent Beck
I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say "Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that." I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests. View quote
Rasmus Lerdorf
I've been a DJ, janitor, ditch digger, waitress, computer instructor, programmer, mechanic, web developer, clerk, manager, marketing director, tour guide and dorm manager, among other things. View quote
Sherrilyn Kenyon
The intellectual property situation is bad and getting worse. To be a programmer, it requires that you understand as much law as you do technology. View quote
Eric Allman