Quotes About Computer Programming

#1. I became this guy that does drum programming, and I don't want to be that guy anymore. I don't want to sit in front of my computer for 18 hours programming 16 bars of music.

Keith Fullerton Whitman

#2. Internet! Is that thing still around?

Homer

#3. In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

Bill Gates

#4. Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.

Donald Knuth

#5. If the discipline of requirements specification has taught us anything, it is that well-specified requirements are as formal as code and can act as executable tests of that code!

Robert C. Martin

#6. I have a well-deserved reputation for being something of a gadget freak, and am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.

Douglas Adams

#7. I took computers in high school. I would do all my own programming, but I didn't see the future of computers for anything other than data processing. Who was going to use a computer for communications?

Craig Hatkoff

#8. XML is not a language in the sense of a programming language any more than sketches on a napkin are a language.

Charles Simonyi

#9. Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.

Tabatha Coffey

#10. meritocracies. Computer programming didn't operate as an old-boy network,

Anonymous

#11. When we had no computers, we had no programming problem either. When we had a few computers, we had a mild programming problem. Confronted with machines a million times as powerful, we are faced with a gigantic programming problem.

Edsger Dijkstra

#12. Learn from them, because I will always be there, one step ahead of you, programming more difficult and advanced patterns into the computer so that your next battle is more difficult, so that you are pushed

Orson Scott Card

#13. I used to do all my programming on a BBC computer. It was limited to 16 tracks, and you used the keyboard, not a mouse, to input, but I was using it so long, I got quite fast at it.

Vince Clarke

#14. Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn

Stephen Hawking

#15. Higher-order functions allow us to abstract over actions, not just values.

Marijn Haverbeke

#16. Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling everything.

Karl Lehenbauer

#17. Never hesitate to ask a lesser person.

Confucius

#18. Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.

Robert C. Martin

#19. Follow your dreams wherever they lead you and pay for those dreams with good jobs in software programming and computer design!

Frederick Lenz

#20. Owning a computer without programming is like having a kitchen and using only the microwave oven

Charles Petzold

#21. I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.

Maya Lin

#22. The job was to put into a, a computer with only 4K of memory an entire basic full blown, floating point Basic and that's one of the greatest programming feats I've ever had a chance to work on.

Bill Gates

#23. Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.

Kent Beck

#24. I suggested that someone grab Bill Gates and get him to install a new operating system, but apparently he's not a demon" At Reaver's eye roll she nodded. "Right? I was surprised too.

Larissa Ione

#25. Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions leads to your results. Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.

T. Harv Eker

#26. I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer ...

Douglas Adams

#27. Tests are stories we tell the next generation of programmers on a project.

Roy Osherove

#28. Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.

Alan Kay

#29. Computer programming is really a lot like writing a recipe. If you've read a recipe, you know what the structure of a recipe is, it's got some things up at the top that are your ingredients, and below that, the directions for how to deal with those ingredients.

Larry Wall

#30. I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.

Walter Mosley

#31. That doesn't upset too many people, but the fact that accessibility restrictions don't enter into the picture has caused more than one otherwise pacifistic soul to contemplate distinctly unpacifistic actions.

Scott Meyers

#32. 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

#33. A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.

Robert C. Martin

#34. With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.

Richard Stallman

#35. BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing.

Seymour Papert

#36. Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate.

Brian Kernighan

#37. In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, "to be, or not to be, that is the question." In the 21st century, "to code, or not to code, that is the challenge.

Newton Lee

#38. The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intention of its user.

C.A.R. Hoare

#39. A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.

Arthur Bloch

#40. This week Apple stores are holding free computer programming classes for children. Or as that's called in China, a job fair.

Conan O'Brien

#41. GOTO, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers to complain about unstructured programmers.

Raymond Simard

#42. As a kid, I was always into art at the same time as computers, and eventually I realised I was making more interesting stuff with my keyboard than with my hands. I really enjoyed modifying computer games more than playing them, so that got me into programming.

Aaron Koblin

#43. Bandwidth grows at least three times faster than computer power.

George Gilder

#44. An interest in Star Trek and an antisocial lifestyle may not, in fact, be unassailable correlates of talent in computer programming.

Cordelia Fine

#45. In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and computer programming.

Iain Banks

#46. In the happy land of elegant code and pretty rainbows, there lives a spoil-sport monster called inefficiency.

Marijn Haverbeke

#47. 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

#48. What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.

Steve Wozniak

#49. It has to become second nature, for a programmer, to notice when a concept is begging to be abstracted into a new word.

Marijn Haverbeke

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

Richard P. Feynman

#51. Computer programming is pretty much guaranteed income. I'm good at it, and I like it.

Andy Weir

#52. I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

Marc Wallice

#53. If you are too lazy to cleanup your database after testing, your filesystem after testing or your memory based system consider moving to a different profession. This isn't a job for you.

Roy Osherove

#54. The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

Joseph Weizenbaum

#55. Distributed programming is the art of solving the same problem that you can solve on a single computer using multiple computers.

Mikito Takada

#56. I graduated from college with a 3.92 GPA with a degree in computer programming and a BFA in fine arts and animation. My first job was painting a mural in the Grimaldi's in Queens.

JWoww

#57. A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes.

Hal Abelson

#58. Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do.

Donald Knuth

#59. Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Brian Kernighan

#60. 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

#61. Only in high school when I began programming computers, did I become interested in tech and start-ups, which led me to attend Stanford and major in Computer Science.

Clara Shih

#62. C gives the programmer what the programmer wants; few restrictions, few complaints... C++ maintains the original spirit of C, that the programmer not the language is in charge.

Herbert Schildt

#63. When I was a teenager, I was a huge computer nerd. I went to computer programming camp. I went to space camp.

Graham Moore

#64. The Startup Act should give all Americans, not just immigrants, a better shot at being tomorrow's engineers and entrepreneurs. And that opportunity could begin at a young age with education in computer programming.

Marvin Ammori

#65. Old Enochian running on neural wetware is not the fastest procedural language ever invented, and it's semantics make AppleScript look like a thing of elegance and beauty

Charles Stross

#66. Programming language is very specific to instructing a computer to do a particular structure of a sequence. It's the very way you tell the machine what you want it to do.

Brian Kernighan

#67. What's in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it that you can make it more.

Alan J. Perlis

#68. I have always been making art from an early age but for nearly forty years did computer programming to earn a living. I bought a house and put my wife and three children through college. Now that diversion is over so I can finally paint full time.

Mike Thompson

#69. Computer programming has been traditionally seen as something that is beyond most people - it's only for a special group with technical expertise and experience. We have developed 'Scratch' as a new type of programming language, which is much more accessible.

Mitchel Resnick

#70. If you've got a stick hitting a drum and you're programming it on a computer, it's more interesting than a sample playing back - it's something in the air, that's the magical ingredient.

Aphex Twin

#71. If I were king, I would redress an abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would have women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind.

Emilie Du Chatelet

#72. If you think about computer programming, it's as antisocial as it gets.

Shawn Fanning

#73. The most successful computer programmers aren't the ones who approach programming as a task they have to carry out in order to get their paychecks. They're the ones for whom programming is a joyful game.

Anonymous

#74. 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

#75. Amazon has included me in an opportunity to provide top-shelf television-style programming live on the world's computer screens. To hold forth with the industry's very best actors, directors, musicians, authors - I'm thrilled to be on the cutting edge of this.

Bill Maher

#76. The LSP makes clear that in OOD the ISA relationship pertains to behavior. Not intrinsic private behavior, but extrinsic public behavior; behavior that clients depend upon.

Robert C. Martin

#77. What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people - ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.

Larry Ellison

#78. Programs are meant to be read by humans and only incidentally for computers to execute.

Donald Ervin Knuth

#79. Often people, especially computer engineers, focus on the machines. But in fact we need to focus on humans, on how humans care about doing programming or operating the application of the machines.

Yukihiro Matsumoto

#80. If you think you're a really good programmer ... read Knuth's Art of Computer Programming ... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.

Bill Gates

#81. Learning to code makes kids feel empowered, creative, and confident. If we want our young women to retain these traits into adulthood, a great option is to expose them to computer programming in their youth.

Susan Wojcicki

#82. Functions that create values are easier to combine in new ways than functions that directly perform side effects

Marijn Haverbeke

#83. I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

Masi Oka

#84. 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