Programming 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

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

When I'm 18, I can finally order that paid programming stuff on TV. Like it always says, 'Must be 18 or older to call,' so I'll be able to call! I can finally buy some blenders from the TV. ~ Austin Mahone

We must not forget that the wheel is reinvented so often because it is a very good idea; I've learned to worry more about the soundness of ideas that were invented only once. ~ David Parnas

The protomolecule can alter the host organism at the molecular level; it can create genetic change on the fly. Not just DNA, but any stable replicator. But it is only a machine. It doesn't think. It follows instructions. If we learn how to alter that programming, then we become the architects of that change. Holden ~ James S.A. Corey

That's what we're focusing on at Not Impossible Labs, looking at problems or needs that can be solved through hacking, modding, programming, whatever, so it helps one person first but has the potential to help many others. ~ Mick Ebeling

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

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

Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

For many phenomena, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes. ~ Joseph M. Juran

You must learn to love, respect and believe in yourself. To accomplish this, begin by restructuring your current self-programming. ~ Marshall Sylver

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

Remember that code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements. We may create languages that are closer to the requirements. We may create tools that help us parse and assemble those requirements into formal structures. But we will never eliminate necessary precision - so there will always be code. ~ Robert C. Martin

I'm programming us a couple of spinach smoothies"
"I'll pass. For the rest of my natural life."
"Just what you need," he insisted, tapped buttons manually. And came out with two cups of coffee. ~ J.D. Robb

Sometimes you cannot program around stupid. ~ David Ferrell

Beauty is our business. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong. ~ Eric S. Raymond

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. ~ Bill Gates

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

You cannot reduce the complexity of a given task beyond a certain point. Once you've reached that point, you can only shift the burden around. ~ Larry Tesler

Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle. ~ Vernor Vinge

It turns out that style matters in programming for the same reason that it matters in writing. It makes for better reading. ~ Douglas Crockford

We don't have much time, so we don't teach them; we acquaint them with things that they can learn. ~ Charles E. Leiserson

Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning. ~ Nicholas Negroponte

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

There's nothing in computing that can't be broken by another level of indirection. ~ Rob Pike

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

Consciousness is observing your thoughts and actions so that you can live from true choice in the present moment rather than being run by programming from the past. ~ T. Harv Eker

A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence. ~ Steven Weinberg

By delivering a wide array of programming to YouTube, the NBA will be able to connect with its existing worldwide fan base and reach a vast new audience that is passionate about basketball. ~ Chad Hurley

Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals. ~ Henry Spencer

True, we can learn much from observation of the failure of others without having to personally suffer the same pain, but the character and memory of the wisdom gained may be more acute and long-lasting from our own personal failures. Even worse is the generational fear of failure prevalent in our culture, resulting from parents carefully programming their offspring as young as three to participate in activities intended to cultivate intellectual and sports prowess which in their design do not allow for failure. Before children can feel the pain of their mistakes, the parents intervene and deflect the taking of personal responsibility by the child. We pay for it so they do not have to. This is the most dangerous thing we can do for them. ~ Kevin R. Anderson

Testing is not the point. The point is about responsibility. ~ Kent Beck

Programming is a science dressed up as art, because most of us don't understand the physics of software and it's rarely, if ever, taught. The physics of software is not algorithms, data structures, languages, and abstractions. These are just tools we make, use, and throw away. The real physics of software is the physics of people. Specifically, it's about our limitations when it comes to complexity and our desire to work together to solve large problems in pieces. This is the science of programming: make building blocks that people can understand and use easily, and people will work together to solve the very largest problems. ~ Pieter Hintjens

Write a program in efficient way as you write for kernel scheduler ~ Ahmad Moawad

Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the 'most reliable Windows ever.' To me, this is like saying that asparagus is 'the most articulate vegetable ever.' ~ Dave Barry

It's just programming" "No. It's because I love him ~ Scott Westerfeld

Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla [Netscape 1.0] is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal when we wrote Mozilla. ~ Jamie Zawinski

Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can, because I'm in it for the love of programming. ~ John Carmack

The system is only as good as the person programming it. If you don't have the follow-through, your system is useless. And by the way, it's that way in parenting; it's that way in marriages. ~ Jamie Lee Curtis

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence! ~ Edsger W. Dijkstra

Punishment symptoms Many of the other types of programming produce psychiatric symptoms, usually administered as punishments by insiders who are trained to administer them, if the survivor has breached security or disobeyed the abusers' instructions in other ways. These symptoms serve a variety of purposes, such as disrupting therapy, getting the survivor into hospital, or getting the survivor to return to the perpetrators to have the programming reinforced.
p126 ~ Alison Miller

For the lifter pursuing fitness and health and perhaps fat loss, here is the general outline of your programming: lift as heavy as possible, as frequently as possible, as fresh as possible, as linked as possible. ~ Sean Schniederjan

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

Learning the art of programming, like most other disciplines, consists of first learning the rules and then learning when to break them. ~ Joshua Bloch

when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create. ~ Why The Lucky Stiff

Youku Tudou is a hybrid, like combining Netflix and YouTube. Like Netflix, with Youku, which launched in 2005, we syndicate a library of longform content and create original content. The Tudou model started with user-generated content but is increasingly becoming about partner-generated programming. ~ Victor Koo

The programming of the consciousness is based upon what is accepted or believed. ~ Steven Redhead

The five stages of model development. - Donald Knuth, Stanford computer scientist Knuth discovered that computer program development goes through five stages. These steps also apply to building models, and I rigorously adhere to them in my consulting work. 1. Decide what you want the model to do. 2. Decide how to build the model. 3. Build the model. 4. Debug the model. 5. Trash stages 1 through 4 and start again, now that you know what you really wanted in the first place. Once you realize that step 5 is inevitable, you become more willing to discard bad models early rather than continually to patch them up. In fact, I recommend getting to step 5 many times by building an evolving set of prototypes. This is consistent with an emerging style of system development known as Extreme Programming.2 To get a large model to work you must start with a small model that works, not a large model that doesn't work. - Alan Manne, Stanford energy economist ~ Sam L. Savage

Tween programming is so retro that the shows even have theme songs, something the quest for more commercial time drove out of prime-time television years ago. ~ Jonathan Dee

Much of what we do arises from automatic programming that bypasses conscious awareness and may even run contrary to our intentions, as Dr. Schwartz points out:
The passive side of mental life, which is generated solely and completely by brain mechanisms, dominates the tone and tenor of our day-to-day, even our second-to-second experience. During the quotidian business of daily life, the brain does indeed operate very much as a machine does.
Decisions that we may believe to be freely made can arise from unconscious emotional drives or subliminal beliefs. They can be dictated by events of which we have no recollection. The stronger a person's automatic brain mechanisms and the weaker the parts of the brain that can impose conscious control, the less true freedom that person will be able to exercise in her life. In OCD, and in many other conditions, no matter how intelligent and well-meaning the individual, the malfunctioning brain circuitry may override rational judgment and intention. Almost any human being when overwhelmed by stress or powerful emotions, will act or react not from intention but from mechanisms that are set off deep in the brain, rather than being generated in the conscious and volitional segments of the cortex. When acting from a driven or triggered state, we are not free. ~ Gabor Mate

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

And the majority of the world is hypnotized the majority of the time. This is why education is so important. If we are programming children anyway, we might as well keep our ideals high and instill charity, curiosity, generosity, creativity and joy. Just imagine! ~ Stephen Poplin

'Fight Master' is a show that Spike came up with. Obviously, Spike has a vested interest in Bellator, which is filling a void that was created when the UFC and 'The Ultimate Fighter' left and went to Fox. I think this fills a huge piece of the puzzle for the folks at Spike, in terms of demographics and what programming they like to do. ~ Randy Couture

Not all roots are buried down in the ground, some are at the top of a tree. ~ Jinvirle

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

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

Our legislation addresses broadcasts over the public airwaves, but I hope the cable and satellite industries see the importance of this issue and voluntarily create a family tier of programming and offer culturally responsible products. ~ Charles W. Pickering

Achieving the right balance is all part of programming a news magazine. ~ Jonathan Kern

You see, programmers tend to be arrogant, self-absorbed introverts. We didn't get into this business because we like people. Most of us got into programming because we prefer to deeply focus on sterile minutia, juggle lots of concepts simultaneously, and in general prove to ourselves that we have brains the size of a planet, all while not having to interact with the messy complexities of other people. ~ Robert C. Martin

Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz.

In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. ~ Carol Rutz

I don't ever know where I'm going. Because one of the wonderful things about writing, which is different than working in programming, you don't need to know. You could just write and discover where you're going. And it's a great deal of fun. ~ Walter Mosley

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

Nature's ultimate goal is to foster the growth of the individual from absolute dependence to independence - or, more exactly, to the interdependence of mature adults living in community. Development is a process of moving from complete external regulation to self-regulation, as far as our genetic programming allows. Well-self-regulated people are the most capable of interacting fruitfully with others in a community and of nurturing children who will also grow into self-regulated adults. Anything that interferes with that natural agenda threatens the organism's chances for long-term survival.

Almost from the beginning of life we see a tension between the complementary needs for security and for autonomy. Development requires a gradual and ageappropriate shift from security needs toward the drive for autonomy, from attachment to individuation. Neither is ever completely lost, and neither is meant to predominate at the expense of the other. With an increased capacity for self-regulation in adulthood comes also a heightened need for autonomy - for the freedom to make genuine choices. Whatever undermines autonomy will be experienced as a source of stress. Stress is magnified whenever the power to respond effectively to the social or physical environment is lacking or when the tested animal or human being feels helpless, without meaningful choices - in other words, when autonomy is undermined.

Autonomy, however, needs to be exercised in a way that does ~ Gabor Mate

I have been an unabashed fan of NPR for many years, and have stolen untold excellent ideas from its programming. ~ Ted Koppel

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

We've all but abandoned soaps in our own culture. I lost my beloved 'Guiding Light' in 2009, and 'One Life to Live' was just the latest casualty to fall beneath the programming axes. ~ Teresa Medeiros

The amount of educational programming on television today is simply desensitizing. The only reason left to go to school is to see gun violence. ~ Bauvard

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes. ~ Hayley Mills

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

When the ride was being designed, it was assumed that Kuka's robotic programming could easily produce the various movements called for in each scene. What nobody considered, however, is that the program was designed for maximum industrial efficiency. If, to correspond to the action in a given scene, the Kuka arm had to simulate 22 different motions, the software - not knowing a theme park ride from a diesel assembly line - would think, "OK, let's knock these 22 movements down to 13 and save half a minute." Because this would throw the timing of everything out of whack, Universal ended up having to create a program that would behave as it was told and not be so anal about efficiency. Luckily for us, Universal worked out the kinks, and Forbidden Journey is now remarkably reliable for such an advanced attraction. ~ Seth Kubersky

We met financial expectations for the quarter in a difficult economic environment. We also signed a two-year programming agreement with Home & Garden Television to launch two new cable television series, and launched the Martha Stewart Kids magazine These initiatives provide future revenue and earnings growth for the brand and build long-term value for shareholders. ~ Martha Stewart

If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource. ~ Eric S. Raymond

Content zips around the Internet thanks to code - programming code. And code is subject to intellectual property laws. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

Yeah, I'm very impressed with Lifetime, this is the first time I've worked with them. I really like the kind of programming that they're into, so I'm hoping that I will. ~ Beau Bridges

One of the big lessons of a big project is you don't want people that aren't really programmers programming, you'll suffer for it! ~ John Carmack

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them! ~ Richard P. Feynman

In the end, it all comes down to 0 and 1 ~ Vineet Goel

Linear programming can be viewed as part of a great revolutionary development which has given mankind the ability to state general goals and to lay out a path of detailed decisions to take in order to "best" achieve its goals when faced with practical situations of great complexity. ~ George Dantzig

In a way, math isn't the art of answering mathematical questions, it is the art of asking the right questions, the questions that give you insight, the ones that lead you in interesting directions, the ones that connect with lots of other interesting questions -the ones with beautiful answers. ~ Gregory Chaitin

Nixon's avowedly 'square' White House was, in fact, less cheesy than Clinton's Lite FM programming and more confident than the Kennedys' culturally craven collect-the-set approach. ~ Mark Steyn

Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a "personal shopper" program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers' desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. ~ John Scalzi

Via self-talk we give our mind instructions on what we expect of ourselves and so behave accordingly. Change the instructions and we change the outcomes. ~ Sam Owen

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. ~ Stephen Hawking

The greatest single programming language ever designed ~ Alan Kay

I love listening to old school stuff. I listen to some new cats out here, but I'm really into, like, Tech N9ne and his clique; I really like Eminem and those guys - cats that got real flow: I really connect with that. But I do love rock. I love a lot of electronica because I love programming synthesizers. ~ Sir Mix-a-Lot

I can follow pretty much every programming language out there, I can make a two-hundred-year-old diary out of some really nasty ingredients, I can even make sense out of the instruction booklets that come with IKEA furniture, but I can*not* make heads or tails of this nonsense right here. ~ Keith R.A. DeCandido

With diligence it is possible to make anything run slowly. ~ Tom Duff

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

If we can't program it, we can't understand it. ~ David Deutsch

When I worked as a programmer, that meant eight straight hours of programming without interruption. That was a good day. In contrast, if I was interrupted with questions, process, or - heaven forbid - meetings, I felt bad. ~ Eric Ries

Our service programming teams view themselves as partners in evangelism with our members and regular attendees. Does that mean we tailor the content to non-Christians? Nope. We tailor the experience to non-Christians. There's a big difference. ~ Andy Stanley

Too many managers and executives try to reduce programming to a low-level assembly-line activity. That's inefficient, wasteful, costly in the long run, and inhumane to programmers. ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

Whenever you feel upset, take full responsibility for the emotions that you are experiencing. Get to work as quickly as possible identifying the programming, or the addiction, that is leading you to reject what other people are saying or doing. ~ Ken Keyes Jr.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded. ~ Virginia Woolf

It's never too late to change the programming imprinted in childhood, carried in our genes or derived from previous lives; the solution is mindfulness in the present moment. ~ Peter Shepherd

Good information architecture enables people to find and do what they came for. Great information architecture takes find out of the equation: the site behaves as the visitor expects. Poor or missing information architecture neuters content, design, and programming and devalues the site for its owners as well as the audience it was created to serve. It's like a film with no director. The actors may be good, the sets may be lovely, but audiences will leave soon after the opening credits. ~ Jeffrey Zeldman