Computer Languages Quotes

#1. Human languages tend to be much more ambiguous than computer languages because humans are much smarter about interpreting the context.

Larry Wall

#2. Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer.

Marvin Minsky

#3. One of the most important and fascinating of all computer languages is Lisp (standing for "List Processing"), which was invented by John McCarthy around the time Algol was invented.

Douglas Hofstadter

#4. Computer languages differ not so much in what they make possible, but in what they make easy.

Larry Wall

#5. The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.

Larry Wall

#6. But the possibility of abuse may be a good reason for leaving capabilities out of other computer languages, it's not a good reason for leaving capabilities out of Perl .

Larry Wall

#7. Whereas smaller computer languages have features designed into them, C++ is unusual in having a whole swathe of functionality discovered, like a tract of 19th century Africa.

Verity Stob

#8. We can think of descriptions almost as computer languages, an operative description that only deals with very simple operations. Its code is sex - Male, female, dark, light, up down, in out - its the language of duality.

Frederick Lenz

#9. Computer scientists have so far worked on developing powerful programming languages that make it possible to solve the technical problems of computation. Little effort has gone toward devising the languages of interaction.

Donald A. Norman

#10. For his major contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages, and in particular for his contributions to the "art of computer programming" through his well-known books in a continuous series by this title.

Donald Knuth

#11. Are you guys really arguing over where to eat dinner?"
"It's one of the more savage tools in the diplomatic arsenal.

Howard Tayler

#12. There are pieces of you that will always be with me.

Nicole Garcia

#13. With the computer and programming languages, mathematics has newly-acquired tools, and its notation should be reviewed in the light of them. The computer may, in effect, be used as a patient, precise, and knowledgeable "native speaker" of mathematical notation.

Kenneth E. Iverson

#14. I am scared; I don't know what is going to happen to me. What was the point of working so hard and of being talented, to be rewarded like this? Never a penny, tormented all my life. It is horrible; one cannot imagine it.

Camille Claudel

#15. What I can't create I don't understand

Richard P. Feynman

#16. Many computer scientists have fallen into the trap of trying to define languages like George Orwell's Newspeak, in which it is impossible to think bad thoughts. What they end up doing is killing the creativity of programming.

Larry Wall

#17. Q: Why bother doing proofs about programming languages? They are almost always boring if the definitions are right.
A: The definitions are almost always wrong.

- Anonymous

Benjamin C. Pierce

#18. Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.

Giacomo Leopardi

#19. I used to want to be a computer programmer when I was younger. We got an Apple II Plus when I was, like, 11 and I wrote programs and BASIC on that, like I think a lot of people did, but I have no idea how to program in the current languages at all.

Chris Parnell

#20. You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.

Arlo Guthrie

#21. We and all others who believe in freedom as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#22. Pascal and C are special-purpose languages for manipulating the registers and memory of a von Neumann-style computer.

Peter Norvig

#23. Remember to keep the mind calm in difficult moments.

Horace