Quotes & Sayings About Computer Code

It may be no coincidence that the world's richest man is a computer programmer. Programmers have "theories" about how software will behave when they change a line of code. Those theories rarely hold up to their first encounter with reality. Unsuccessful programmers could probably wax eloquent about how things should be different. Successful programmers just debug their code. Such a profession would quickly wean a person from idealistic notions about how to make a change. Successful programmers soon learn that it is more profitable to challenge their own thinking than to curse their computers when faced with unexpected results. — Ron Davison

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

In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep. — Daniel H. Wilson

The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind-computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands.The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind-creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.These people-artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers-will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys. — Daniel H. Pink

It's a myth that Sanskrit is the best language for writing computer code. Patriotic Indians have spread this lie for many years - Bill Gates — Manu Joseph

Our laws are like the software that runs our country. All the laws for a country, together, are called its legal code, just like computer software is written using code. — Liz Long

Once you can understand something in a way that you can shove it into a computer, you have cracked its code, transcended any particularity it might have at a given time. It was as if we had become the gods of vision and had effectively created all possible images, for they would merely be reshufflings of the bits in the computers we had before us, completely under our control. — Jaron Lanier

Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress. — Scott McNealy

If you've ever signed up for a website and given a fake zip code or a fake birthday, you have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Any child under thirteen who visits newyorktimes violates their Terms of Service and is a criminal - not just in theory, but according to the working doctrine of the Department of Justice.1 The examples I've laid out are extreme, sure, but the laws involved are so broadly written as to ensure that, essentially, every Internet-using American is a tort-feasing felon on a lifelong spree of depraved web browsing. — Christian Rudder

In the years to come, some of our best minds will try to dig deeper into that computer program, to figure out its individual lines of code (the IF-THENS that we call genes), the products of those lines (what we call proteins), how all those lines of biological code fit together, and how they make room for nurture.

In the long run, the effects on society will be profound. Take, for example, the advances that our increasing understanding of genes will lead to in medicine. Because, as we have seen, the brain is built like the rest of the body, it is also amenable to many of the same types of treatment. For example, stem cell therapies originally developed for leukemia are being adapted to treat Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Gene therapies developed for cystic fibrosis may someday help treat brain tumors. Both work by harnessing the body's own toolkit for development. — Gary F. Marcus

If you control the code, you control the world. This is the future that awaits us. — Marc Goodman

As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery ... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s. — Ryan Holmes

And that was it: infinite loop; no alt-tab out. You could force close, shut down the computer, start all over and run it again, and the game would still lock up and freeze at the same place. "Where's Popper?" No cheat code. Game over. There was no way past that moment. — Donna Tartt

Rules. Even as the world of phone and computer sex (and dominance) were full of their own rules, so was the new world of doing-it-for real. And some of these new rules, (OK, most of them, Robin admitted) were just as silly as the ones she had learned and followed before. Safe words, for example. Magic words that when said by the bottom, stopped a scene so that some kind of inconvenient or dangerous activity could be halted. Robin had nothing against the concept ...
Having a code to use so that you're free to pull against the bondage or whimper "no, no, no" seemed to be a great idea. But having all these possible ways to orchestrate what was happening seemed, well, contrary to the point ...
I want to feel that I can't stop it. I want to be really mastered, taken over by someone who isn't goin to stop doing things because I'm not getting off on it. Someone who knows enough not to endanger me, unless that was what was intended ... — Laura Antoniou

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it. — Richard Stallman

All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works. — Seth Godin

Computers had their origin in military cryptography - in a sense, every computer game represents the commandeering of a military code-breaking apparatus for purposes of human expression. — Austin Grossman

he thought a bit about God, and whether He might be some kind of universal digital computer, subject to the occasional bug or hack. Was it possible that politicians and hedge-fund operators were some kind of garbled cosmic computer code? That the Opponent, instead of having horns and a forked tail, was a fat bearded guy drinking Big Gulps and eating anchovy pizzas and writing viruses down in a hellish basement? That prayers weren't answered because Satan was running denial-of-service attacks? — John Sandford

Some days I spent up to three hours in the arcade after school, dimly aware that we were the first people, ever, to be doing these things. We were feeling something they never had - a physical link into the world of the fictional - through the skeletal muscles of the arm to the joystick to the tiny person on the screen, a person in an imagined world. It was crude but real. We'd fashioned an outpost in the hostile, inaccessible world of the imagination, like dangling a bathysphere into the crushing dark of the deep ocean, a realm hitherto inaccessible to humankind. This is what games had become. Computers had their origin in military cryptography - in a sense, every computer game represents the commandeering of a military code-breaking apparatus for purposes of human expression. We'd done that, taken that idea and turned it into a thing its creators never imagined, our own incandescent mythology. — Austin Grossman

Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, has launched a movement to convince people to not go to college.3 It's a waste of money. The return on investment isn't there anymore. School has gotten too expensive. . . If writing [computer] code is your deal and you're able to go to a trade school that enables you to write code, that's far better than a computer science degree from a four-year college or university that looks great on paper, but doesn't give you the skills you need when you graduate. — John Dearie

When people think about computer science, they imagine people with pocket protectors and thick glasses who code all night. — Marissa Mayer

Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind, I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor. — Brian Kernighan

Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. ... Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants speed. — Erik Naggum

Error processing is turning out to be one of the thorniest problems of modern computer science, and you can't afford to deal with it haphazardly. Some people have estimated that as much as 90 percent of a program's code is written for exceptional, error-processing cases or housekeeping, implying that only 10 percent is written for nominal cases (Shaw in Bentley 1982). With so much code dedicated to handling errors, a strategy for handling them consistently should be spelled out in the architecture. — Steve McConnell

In engineering, as in other creative arts, we must learn to do analysis to support our efforts in synthesis. One cannot build a beautiful and functional bridge without a knowledge of steel and dirt, and a considerable mathematical technique for using this knowledge to compute the properties of structures. Similarly, one cannot build a beautiful computer system without a deep understanding of how to "previsualize" the process generated by the code one writes. — Gerald Jay Sussman

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

When people write software, they are not writing it for themselves. In fact, they are not even writing primarily for the computer. Rather, good programmers know that code is written for the next human being who has to read it in order to maintain or reuse it. If that person cannot understand the code, it's all but useless in a realistic development scenario. — Mark Lutz

There is a lack of talent in technology, and we need to be encouraging kids in school to learn how to code. We need to encourage computer science as a major. We need to encourage entrepreneurism. — Jon Oringer

The bank had expanded its services in recent years to offer anonymous computer source code escrow services and faceless digitized backup. — Dan Brown

It's marked as an object," Wu said. In computer terminology, an "object" was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room. — Michael Crichton

Using the analogy of the human mind as a computer, gossip can be compared to a computer virus. A computer virus is a piece of computer language written in the same language all the other codes are written in, but with a harmful intent. This code is inserted into the program of your computer when you least expect it and most of the time without your awareness. After this code has been introduced, your computer doesn't work quite right, or it doesn't function at all because the codes get so mixed up with so many conflicting messages that it stops producing good results. — Miguel Ruiz

Reusability is key in reducing bugs and coding quickly. The more I use a piece of code, the more confident and familiar I become with it, which in turn significantly speeds up my development time. — Robert Duchnik

I started passing out the schematics and the code listings for the computer, telling everyone here it is. It's small, it's simple, it's inexpensive: Build your own. No idea to start a company. Steve Jobs came by later and say, you know, people are interested. Why don't we start a company? — Steve Wozniak

Examined in color through the adjustable window of a computer screen, the Mandelbrot set seems more fractal than fractals, so rich is its complication across scales. A cataloguing of the different images within it or a numerical description of the set's outline would require an infinity of information. But here is a paradox: to send a full description of the set over a transmission line requires just a few dozen characters of code. A terse computer program contains enough information to reproduce the entire set. Those who were first to understand the way the set commingles complexity and simplicity were caught unprepared-even Mandelbrot. — James Gleick

Poke the box How do computer programmers learn their art? Is there a step-by-step process that guarantees you'll get good? All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works. The box might be a computer or it might be a market or it might be a customer or it might be your boss. It's a puzzle, one that can be solved in only one way - by poking. — Seth Godin

The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves. — Alain De Botton

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

During World War II, the British spy agency MI8 secretly recruited a crew of teenage wireless operators (prohibited from discussing their activities even with their families) to intercept coded messages from the Nazis. By forwarding these transmissions to the crack team of code breakers at Bletchley Park led by the computer pioneer Alan Turing, these young hams enabled the Allies to accurately predict the movements of the German and Italian forces. Asperger's prediction that the little professors in his clinic could one day aid in the war effort had been prescient, but it was the Allies who reaped the benefits. — Steve Silberman

It's not about how women are deficient. It's more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiencies, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever. — Neal Stephenson

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

The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you - and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. — Jonathan Zittrain

There isn't an equation that can confirm something as self-evident (to us humans) as "muggy weather is uncomfortable" or "mothers are older than their daughters." There has been some progress made in translating this sort of information into mathematical logic, but to catalog the common sense of a four-year-old child would require hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. As Voltaire once said, "Common sense is not so common. — Michio Kaku

It's simply unrealistic to depend on secrecy for security in computer software. You may be able to keep the exact workings of the program out of general circulation, but can you prevent the code from being reverse-engineered by serious opponents? Probably not. The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets. — Whitfield Diffie

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

Ultimately, I try to think of my application's main codebase as just stringing together various components and code from many sources. It just controls logic and flow. The real nitty-gritty is handled behind the scenes. This is why frameworks like Backbone are so important - they hide a lot of the details in the background and allow you to just focus on the flow and control of your application. — Robert Duchnik

It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all ... — Larry Wall

Computers were never designed in the first place to become musical instruments. Within a computer, everything is sterile - there's no sound, there's no air. It's totally code. Like with computer-generated effects in movies, you can create wonders. But it's really hard to create emotion. — Thomas Bangalter

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the computer code that led to the creation of the World Wide Web in 1990, he did not try to patent or charge fees for the use of his technology. — Rebecca MacKinnon

jQuery is by far the most widely used library for JavaScript. It is used on more than 50% of websites. Many frameworks, such as Backbone and Twitter's Bootstrap, are built on top of jQuery. Being able to extend and write plugins for jQuery can not only save lots of time, but also makes code much cleaner and easier to maintain. — Robert Duchnik

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. — Martin Fowler

Thought, then, is the execution of this computer code. — Eric Baum

At the laboratory, Turing designed the first relatively complete electronic stored-program digital computer for code breaking in 1945. Darwin deemed it too ambitious, however, and after several years Turing left in disgust. When the laboratory finally built his design in 1950, it was the fastest computer in the world and, astonishingly, had the memory capacity of an early Macintosh built three decades later. — Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down ... and writes.
Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange.
Some, downright weird.
But then again, you'd have to be.
To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors. — Christopher Hopper

What is truly revolutionary about molecular biology in the post-Watson-Crick era is that it has become digital ... the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.' -Richard Dawkins — Matt Ridley

The Supreme Court has held that code is speech. And it doesn't matter that it's done on a computer or done face to face or done in a newspaper, reporting the facts of the world is protected speech. — Jimmy Wales

The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you're headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age, and it becomes harder and harder to get a job. — Vivek Wadhwa

Next to the monitor that showed the jobs queuing to run on the computer was a metal post that seemed to serve no purpose. It was a while before someone explained it to me: after repeatedly replastering the wall, the administration had decided to install the post for the convenience of frustrated students, who invariably needed something to kick when their code crashed. — Sonia Sotomayor

I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickenson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People", Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising", and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones ... What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes. — Sarah Vowell

People have to be free to investigate computer security. People have to be free to look for the vulnerabilities and create proof of concept code to show that they are true vulnerabilities in order for us to secure our systems. — Edward Snowden

When human beings acquired language, we learned not just how to listen but how to speak. When we gained literacy, we learned not just how to read but how to write. And as we move into an increasingly digital reality, we must learn not just how to use programs but how to make them. In the emerging highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It's really that simple: Program, or be programmed. — Douglas Rushkoff

The word 'code' turns out to be a really important word for my book, 'The Information.' The genetic code is just one example. We talk now about coders, coding. Computer guys are coders. The stuff they write is code. — James Gleick

The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal. — Richard Dawkins

The things you're accustomed to are dangerous. In applications intended for use within an organization, a design based on API calls works well and is easy to develop. The API call metaphor assumes away the network boundary and lets a client invoke a method on a remote computer just like it would call the API of a local code library. — Leonard Richardson

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology. — Charles Petzold

Earlier this week ... scientists announced the completion of a task that once seemed unimaginable; and that is, the deciphering of the entire DNA sequence of the human genetic code. This amazing accomplishment is likely to affect the 21st century as profoundly as the invention of the computer or the splitting of the atom affected the 20th century. I believe that the 21st century will be the century of life sciences, and nothing makes that point more clearly than this momentous discovery. It will revolutionize medicine as we know it today. — Edward Kennedy

She's scrolling fast through my code, which is a little embarrassing, because my code is full of comments like 'Hell, yeah!' and 'Now, computer, it is time for you to do my bidding. — Robin Sloan

Just as Morse code provides a good introduction to the nature of codes, the telegraph provides a good introduction to the hardware of the computer. — Charles Petzold

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

If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as 'lines produced' but as 'lines spent.' — Edsger Dijkstra

My hacking involved pretty much exploring computer systems and obtaining access to the source code of telecommunication systems and computer operating systems, because my goal was to learn all I can about security vulnerabilities within these systems. — Kevin Mitnick

Nerds are running the world. Andrew Garfield made a movie [called "The Social Network"] about it. Nerds are no longer pariahs and knowing how to write computer code is longer a [mocked] quality. What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context. That, I think, was one of the challenges for us - getting Peter Parker's outsider status to be current. — Marc Webb

Most programs are not write-once. They are reworked and rewritten again and again in their lived. Bugs must be debugged. Changing requirements and the need for increased functionality mean the program itself may be modified on an ongoing basis. During this process, human beings must be able to read and understand the original code. It is therefore more important by far for humans to be able to understand the program than it is for the computer. — Yukihiro Matsumoto

The near future will see robot suits that allow paraplegics to walk, designer drugs that melt away certain forms of cancer, and computer code being used as both an international currency and a weapon to destroy physical infrastructure halfway around the world. — Alec J. Ross