βIt is economically better for most organizations to conserve programmer cycles than computer cycles.β
- Robert C. Martin
Clean Code Q&A
βOne should not first make the program and then prove its correctness, because then the requirement of providing the proof would only increase the poor programmerβs burden. On the contrary: the programmer should let correctness proof and program grow hand in hand.β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
The Humble Programmer
βMethods should have verb or verb phrase.β
- Robert C. Martin
βClasses and objects should have noun or noun phrase names.β
- Robert C. Martin
βSimplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βEngineers have to be challenged and if they're not challenged with the business problem, they're going to challenge themselves with technical problems.β
- Vaughn Vernon
βIncreasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling --- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.β
- Niklaus Wirth
βCorrectness is clearly the prime quality. If a system does not do what it is supposed to do, then everything else about it matters little.β
- Bertrand Meyer
βSimplicity is prerequisite for reliabilityβ
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βA good way to stay flexible is to write less code.β
- Andy Hunt
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
βGood judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.β
- Fred Brooks
βInside every large program, there is a small program trying to get out.β
- C.A.R. Hoare
βDesign and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.β
- Bjarne Stroustrup
βBefore software can be reusable it first has to be usable.β
- Ralph Johnson
βIt's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.β
- Steve McConnell
βGood code is its own best documentation. As youβre about to add a comment, ask yourself, βHow can I improve the code so that this comment isnβt needed?β Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer.β
- Steve McConnell
βLet us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to to, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.β
- Donald Knuth
βA primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.β
- Niklaus Wirth
βPerfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take awayβ
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
βAdding manpower to a late software project makes it later!β
- Fred Brooks
βTesting by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often.β
- Steve McConnell
βBeware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it .β
- Donald Knuth
βWhen debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code.β
- Richard Pattis
βAvoiding complexity reduces bugs.β
- Linus Torvald
βIf debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βThe first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code account for the other 90 percent of the development time.β
- Tom Cargill
βNine people can't make a baby in a month.β
- Fred Brooks
The Mythical Man-Month
βInterviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer? Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written.β
- Bill Gates
βThe competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βWe should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.β
- Donald Knuth
βMake it work, make it right, make it fastβ
- Kent Beck
βThe cleaner and nicer the program, the faster it's going to run. And if it doesn't, it'll be easy to make it fast.β
- Joshua Bloch
βClarity and brevity sometimes are at odds. When they are, I choose clarity.β
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss
βThese machines have no common sense; they have not yet learned to "think," and they do exactly as they are told, no more and no less. This fact is the hardest concept to grasp when one first tries to use a computer.β
- Donald Knuth
βComputers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it or him.β
- Captain Spock
βComputers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.β
- Donald Knuth
βSQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.β
- Philip Greenspun
βLanguages shape the way we think, or don't.β
- Erik Naggum
βA language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.β
- Alan J. Perlis
βTo me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.β
- Grace Hopper
βControlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.β
- Brian Kernigan
βAlways code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.β
- Martin Golding
βA clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.β
- Albert Einstein
βThere are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.β
- C.A.R. Hoare
βDomain experts should object to terms or structures that are awkward or inadequate to convey domain understanding; developers should watch for ambiguity or inconsistency that will trip up design.β
- Eric Evans
βAvoid mental mapping when naming methods, classes or variables. β
- Robert C. Martin
βPrograms must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.β
- Harold "Hal" Abelson
β[T]he difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.β
- Linus Torvald
βWhen you feel the need to write a comment, first try to refactor the code so that any comment becomes superfluous.β
- Martin Fowler
βDevOps is "a cross-disciplinary community of practice dedicated to the study of building, evolving and operating rapidly-changing resilient systems at scale.β
- Jez Humble
βI call [the invention of the null reference] my billion-dollar mistake.β
- Tony Hoare
βProgram testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βIt is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.β
- Edsger W. Dijkstra
βAny fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.β
- Martin Fowler