Programming Languages Quotes

I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language [ ... ] I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way. ~ Rasmus Lerdorf

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We teachers make the road, others will make the journey. ~ Victor Hugo

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

The three most important aspects of debugging and real estate are the same: Location, Location, and Location. ~ Richard E. Pattis

The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity. ~ Tony Hoare

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

Most programming languages are decidedly inferior to mathematical notation and are little used as tools of thought in ways that would be considered significant by, say, an applied mathematician. ~ Kenneth E. Iverson

It's not that Perl programmers are idiots, it's that the language rewards idiotic behavior in a way that no other language or tool has ever done. ~ Erik Naggum

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible. ~ Alan Kay

The greatest single programming language ever designed ~ Alan Kay

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~ Kurt Lewin

I suspect few housing projects in the US were designed by architects who expected to live in them. You see the same thing in programming languages. C, Lisp, and Smalltalk were created for their own designers to use. Cobol, Ada, and Javawere created for other people to use. If you think you're designing
something for idiots, odds are you're not designing something good, even for idiots. ~ Paul Graham

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

Generative testing is an approach to testing software that was made popular by the QuickCheck library. Originally written in Haskell and since ported to several other programming languages (Ruby, Python, C, C++, Objective-C, Smalltalk, Java, JavaScript, Erlang, Scala, Clojure...), the QuickCheck library allows the developer to separate test logic from the generation of test cases. This means that, as developers, we can spend less time instructing the compiler how to test our code, and focus instead on what properties we expect our code to have. ~ Anonymous

It's kind of pathetic actually that we are all sitting here talking about Forth. It is not the wave of the future. It's never been the wave of the future. It's not within our power to make it the wave of the future. ~ Charles H. Moore

Job Control Language is the worst programming language ever designed anywhere by anybody for any purpose. ~ Fred Brooks

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming. ~ Alan Perlis

The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all. ~ Jacques Barzun

Just as dogs often come to resemble their owners, it seems that programming languages end up reflecting the temperaments and personalities of their creators in some subtle ways, ~ Nick Parish

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages. ~ Alan Perlis

A teacher's job is to take a bunch of live wires and see that they are well-grounded. ~ Darwin D. Martin

Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used. Anything is possible, anything can happen. On a flimsy ground of reality, imagination spins marvelous patterns. ~ August Strindberg

And C++ programming languages, we own those, have licensed them out multiple times, obviously. We have a lot of royalties coming to us from C++. ~ Darl McBride

Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term. ~ Alan Kay

If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? ~ Brian Kernighan

My programming language was solder. ~ Terry Pratchett

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

We often treat children as if they're not very competent to do anything on their own. So we make them stop learning in a natural way - by exploring. Logo [the computer programming language ] allows them to find their way around the computer, as they would find their way around the house, uncontaminated by the bureaucracies of schools. ~ Seymour Papert

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it. ~ Frank Herbert

Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only too sizes; too big and too small. ~ Richard E. Pattis

Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, and PostgreSQL let you create user-defined types (UDTs). The simplest UDT is a standard or built-in data type (CHARACTER, INTEGER, and so on) with additional check and other constraints. You can define the data type marital_status, for example, as a single-character CHARACTER data type that allows only the values S, M, W, D, or NULL (for single, married, widowed, divorced, or unknown). More-complex UDTs are similar to classes in object-oriented programming languages such as Java or Python. You can define a UDT once and use it in multiple tables, rather than repeat its definition in each table in which it's used. Search your DBMS documentation for user-defined type. UDTs are created in standard SQL with the statement CREATE TYPE. ~ Chris Fehily

It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use, and in this respect programming languages have a devious influence: they shape our thinking habits. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

Talk is cheap. Show me the code. ~ Linus Torvalds

With 'Scratch,' you create computer programs by snapping together graphical programming blocks, much like LEGO bricks, without any of the obscure syntax and punctuation of traditional programming languages. After creating an interactive 'Scratch' project, you can share it on the 'Scratch' website, just as you would share videos on YouTube. ~ Mitchel Resnick

You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program. ~ Alan Perlis

My particular interest for the past couple of years has been to really think deeply about the big impendence mismatch we have between programming languages, C# in particular, and the database world, like SQL or, for that matter, the XML world, like XQuery and those languages that exist. ~ Anders Hejlsberg

I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain. ~ Erik Naggum

The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought. ~ Kenneth E. Iverson

Programming is not all the same. Normal written languages have different rhythms and idioms, right? Well, so do programming languages. The language called C is all harsh imperatives, almost raw computer-speak. The language called Lisp is like one long, looping sentence, full of subclauses, so long in fact that you usually forget what it was even about in the first place. The language called Erlang is just like it sounds: eccentric and Scandinavian. ~ Robin Sloan

As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way. ~ Brian Kernighan

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity. ~ William Wulf

The structure of a software system provides the ecology in which code is born, matures, and dies. A well-designed habitat allows for the successful evolution of all the components needed in a software system. ~ Richard E. Pattis

In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages. ~ Guido Van Rossum

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

The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in. ~ Andrei Codrescu

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

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

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer. ~ Bill Gates

SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing. ~ Philip Greenspun

The value of a prototype is in the education it gives you, not in the code itself. ~ Amari Cooper

The precision provided (or enforced) by programming languages and their execution can identify lacunas, ambiguities, and other areas of potential confusion in conventional [mathematical] notation. ~ Kenneth E. Iverson

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. ~ Jacques Barzun

While functions being unable to change state is good because it helps us reason about our programs, there's one problem with that. If a function can't change anything in the world, how is it supposed to tell us what it calculated? In order to tell us what it calculated, it has to change the state of an output device (usually the state of the screen), which then emits photons that travel to our brain and change the state of our mind, man. ~ Miran Lipovaca

XML is not a language in the sense of a programming language any more than sketches on a napkin are a language. ~ Charles Simonyi

In languages with a garbage collector (GC), the GC keeps track and cleans up memory that isn't being used anymore, and we don't need to think about it. Without a GC, it's our responsibility to identify when memory is no longer being used and call code to explicitly return it, just as we did to request it. Doing this correctly has historically been a difficult programming problem. If we forget, we'll waste memory. If we do it too early, we'll have an invalid variable. If we do it twice, that's a bug too. We need to pair exactly one allocate with exactly one free.

Rust takes a different path: the memory is automatically returned once the variable that owns it goes out of scope. ~ Steve Klabnik

Overemphasis of efficiency leads to an unfortunate circularity in design: for reasons of efficiency early programming languages reflected the characteristics of the early computers, and each generation of computers reflects the needs of the programming languages of the preceding generation. ~ Kenneth E. Iverson

Scientists build to learn; Engineers learn to build. ~ Fred Brooks

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, you are not ready to code it. ~ Richard E. Pattis

Most programming languages contain good parts and bad parts. I discovered that I could be better programmer by using only the good parts and avoiding the bad parts. ~ Douglas Crockford

In English every word can be verbed. ~ Alan Perlis

When the ANSI C standard was under development, the pragma directive was introduced. Borrowed from Ada, #pragma is used to convey hints to the compiler, such as the desire to expand a particular function in-line or suppress range checks. Not previously seen in C, pragma met with some initial resistance from a gcc implementor, who took the "implementation-defined" effect very literally - in gcc version 1.34, the use of pragma causes the compiler to stop compiling and launch a computer game instead! The gcc manual contained the following: The "#pragma" command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an arbitrary implementation-defined effect. In the GNU C preprocessor, "#pragma" first attempts to run the game "rogue"; if that fails, it tries to run the game "hack"; if that fails, it tries to run GNU Emacs displaying the Tower of Hanoi; if that fails, it reports a fatal error. In any case, preprocessing does not continue. - Manual for version 1.34 of the GNU C compiler ~ Peter Van Der Linden

Eiffel borrows quite openly from several earlier programming languages and I am sure that if we had found a good language construct in C we would have used it as well. ~ Bertrand Meyer

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity ... The geniuses of the computer field, on the the other hand, are the people with the keenest aesthetic senses, the ones who are capable of creating beauty. Beauty is decisive at every level: the most important interfaces, the most important programming languages, the winning algorithms are the beautiful ones. ~ David Gelernter

My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. ~ Richard Stallman

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. ~ Robert Sewell

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. ~ Alan Perlis

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop. ~ Alan Perlis

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering. ~ William James

she likes the sound of languages other than English. ~ Ken Liu

We're not programming to conservatives. We're just not eliminating their point of view. ~ Roger Ailes

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages. ~ Bernard Malamud

History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. ~ Richard Lamm

Schools are in many ways perhaps the first step in getting us to understand that institutions control our lives and that we should accept unquestionably that there can be no objection to this. ~ Mango Wodzak

I love languages (I speak French and Spanish and have been studying Russian) and accents; so one definite dream role would be being able to combine those elements into a character. ~ Sundra Oakley

My favourite films are in languages I don't understand. ~ Chika Anadu

When Richard created the Purple Gentian, the talent for ancient languages that had stunned his schoolmasters at Eton had come to his aid once again. While Sir Percy had pretended to be a fop, Richard bored the French into complacency with long lectures about antiquity. When Frenchmen demanded to know what he was doing in France, and Englishmen reproached him for fraternising with the enemy, Richard opened his eyes wide and proclaimed, 'But a scholar is a citizen of the world!' Then he quoted Greek at them. They usually didn't ask again. Even Gaston Delaroche, the Assistant Minister of Police, who had sworn in blood to be avenged on the Purple Gentian and had the tenacity of…well, of Richard's mother, had stopped snooping around Richard after being subjected to two particularly knotty passages from the Odyssey. ~ Lauren Willig

Genitive is a funny word because it means "from," but it also is the gender in European languages for objects: the masculine, feminine, and neuter. So if you have a genitive present, there's room for everybody to fit in. I just did a project in Vienna about rock, paper, scissor; you change the gender and it simply changes the whole thing. Rock is no longer a male. It doesn't function the same way. ~ Lawrence Weiner

Languages proclaim that woman is half of man, and by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal ... It was a way of getting close to different languages, of feeling connected to writers very distant from me in space and time. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

He knows that the most important words in all languages are the small words. ~ Paulo Coelho

This was the beginning of a lifelong obsession with foreign languages. ~ John McWhorter

More and more as we come closer and closer in touch with nature and its teachings are we able to see the Divine and are therefore fitted to interpret correctly the various languages spoken by all forms of nature about us. ~ George Washington Carver

Robert Heinlein says in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel that the only things worth studying are history, languages, and science. Actually, he adds maths, but honestly they left out the mathematical part of my brain. ~ Jo Walton

Patients are patients because they are out of rapport with their own unconscious ... Patients are people who have had too much programming - so much outside programming that they have lost touch with their inner selves. ~ Milton H. Erickson

The art of programming is the skill of controlling complexity. ~ Marijn Haverbeke

Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics. ~ Doron Zeilberger

Responsible Development is the style of development I aspire to now. It can be summarized by answering the question, How would I develop if it were my money? I'm amazed how many theoretical arguments evaporate when faced with this question. ~ Kent Beck

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

Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that - if Herodotus can be believed - was unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats. ~ Stacy Schiff

So there they were, these over-enthusiastic Europhiles, who could speak so many of Europe's languages and recite its poetry, who believed in its moral superiority, appreciated its ballet and opera, cultivated its heritage, dreamed of its postnational unity, and adored its manners, clothes, and fashions, who had loved it unconditionally and uninhibitedly for decades, since the beginning of the Jewish Enlightenment, and who had done everything humanly possible to please it, to contribute to it in every way and in every domain, to become part of it, to break through its cool hostility with frantic courtship, to make friends, to ingratiate themselves, to be accepted, to belong, to be loved... ~ Amos Oz

I have no words. Sixteen languages, but no words.
-Vishous ~ J.R. Ward

The sex act is emotionally the richest and the most imaginatively charged event in our lives, comparable only to the embrace of our children as a source of affection and mystery. But no kinaesthetic language has yet been devised to describe it in detail, and without one we are in the position of an unqualified observer viewing an operation for brain surgery. Ballet, gymnastics, American football and judo are furnished with elaborate kinaesthetic languages, but it's still easier to describe the tango or the cockpit take-off procedures for a 747 than to recount in detail an act of love. ~ J.G. Ballard

Religion is a language, if you can speak it, it's a bridge, if not, then it's a barrier. ~ Abhijit Naskar

There were no PCs when I started programming on computers. ~ Dave Winer

Most non-programmers don't think of plaintext like that. To them, text files feel like filling in tax forms for an angry robotic auditor that yells at them if they forget a single semicolon. ~ Robert Nystrom

I had been a religion major, with a focus on scriptural languages, and upon receiving my degree, felt qualified to do
nothing. ~ Peter Manseau

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life. ~ Alan Lightman