Quotes & Sayings About C Programming Language

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

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

All of us who attended the meeting - including Microsoft - unanimously agreed that unilaterally extending the Java programming language would hurt compatibility among Java tools and programs, would injure other tools vendors and would damage customers' ability to run a Java-based software product on whatever platform they wished. — James Gosling

The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages. — Richard Stallman

My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation. — Niklaus Wirth

In 1989, I was awarded the Von Neumann Prize in Operations Research Theory by the Operations Research Society of America and The Institute of Management Sciences. They cited my works in the areas of portfolio theory, sparse matrix techniques and the SIMSCRIPT programming language. — Harry Markowitz

C++ is in that inconvenient spot where it doesn't help make things simple enough to be truly usable for prototyping or simple GUI programming, and yet isn't the lean system programming language that C is that actively encourages you to use simple and direct constructs. — Linus Torvalds

A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't. — Raymond Simard

Why would you have a language that is not theoretically exciting? Because it's very useful. — Rob Pike

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

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

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

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

I was really looking at computers as a way to understand the mind. But at M.I.T., my mind was blown by having a whole computer to yourself as long as you liked.I felt a surge of intellectual power through access to this computer, and I started thinking about what this could mean for kids and the way they learn. That's when we developed the computer programming language for kids, Logo. — Seymour Papert

most obvious application of functions is defining new vocabulary. Creating new words in regular, human-language prose is usually bad style. But in programming, it is indispensable. — Marijn Haverbeke

Habits, not ideas, are the programming language of human beings — Danny Dover

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

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

The establishment of formal standards for proofs about programs [ ... ] and the proposal that the semantics of a programming language may be defined independently of all processors for that language, by establishing standards of rigor for proofs about programs in the language, appears to be novel. — Robert W. Floyd

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant. — Alan Perlis

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

What I can't create I don't understand — Richard P. Feynman

The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language. — Donald Knuth

I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That's why programming - or buying software - on the basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess. — Ted Nelson

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

C++ tries to guard against Murphy, not Machiavelli. — Damian Conway

I like my code to be elegant and efficient. The logic should be straightforward to make it hard
for bugs to hide, the dependencies minimal to ease maintenance, error handling complete according to an articulated strategy, and performance
close to optimal so as not to tempt
people to make the code messy with unprincipled optimizations. Clean code does one thing well.

-Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++
and author of The C++ Programming
Language — Robert C. Martin

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

The discipline of programming is most like sorcery. Both use precise language to instruct inanimate objects to do our bidding. Small mistakes in programs or spells can lead to completely unforseen behavior: e.g., see the story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Neither study is easy: " ... her [Galinda's] early appetite for sorcery had waned once she'd heard what a grind it was to learn spells and, worse, to understand them." from the book "Wicked" by G. Maguire. — Richard E. Pattis

I took a Logo programming class in fifth grade. Logo is a language specifically designed for the classroom environment. It was basically doodling through words. — Gene Luen Yang

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

Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being. — Catherynne M Valente

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

But while you can always write 'spaghetti code' in a procedural language, object-oriented languages used poorly can add meatballs to your spaghetti. — Andrew Hunt

A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. — Alan Perlis

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

We think we're going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java. — Larry Ellison

However, when Java is promoted as the sole programming language, its flaws and limitations become serious. — Bjarne Stroustrup

People who passionately want to believe that the world is basically simple react to this with a fury that goes beyond what I consider appropriate for discussing a programming language. — Bjarne Stroustrup

My programming language was solder. — Terry Pratchett

A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen. — Paul Graham

When your language is nowhere near Turing-complete, syntactic sugar can be your friend. — Eric S. Raymond

It is the role of the artistic coder to question the coding languages, both through self-reflection and by using them for unintended purposes. These coders introduce multiplicity where none existed and challenge definitions of intent for the entire environment of programming language, machine and system. — Stephanie Strickland

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

When you have done some programming then you'll know how satisfying it can be to use a program that you made yourself, one that does exactly what you want it to do. Creating a Sugar Activity takes that enjoyment to the next level. A useful Sugar Activity can be translated by volunteers into every language, be downloaded hundreds of times a week and used every day by students all over the world. — James D. Simmons

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

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

So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming. — Edsger Dijkstra