Good Programmers Quotes & Sayings

The difference between a bad programmer and a good programmer is understanding. That is, bad programmers don't understand what they are doing and good programmers do. - Max Kanat-Alexander — Steve Fenton

A very good senior programmer (who might get paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million worth of value for the same price. That's enough of a difference to build an entire company's profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you're rich. — Seth Godin

I had always thought of Chris as my kid brother and watching how this kid, as I still thought of him, had affected so many people's lives around the world was incredible. — Margot Kidder

When building a complex system, having crackerjack programmers (who can make any design work, even a bad one) can be a liability. The result, after lots of effort, is a working system that cannot be easily maintained or upgraded. Good -but not great- programmers would fail early, causing a realization that the system must be redesigned, and then reimplemented. The extra cost is paid once, early in the system's cycle (when it is cheap), instead of repeatedly paid late in the system's cycle (when it is more expensive). — Richard E. Pattis

Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program. — Linus Torvalds

My mother complained about the Parisians' habit of bumping into tourists on the narrow sidewalks. 'Am I bumping into them?' she asked, perplexed. 'I feel like such a clumsy American.' 'No, no,' I corrected. 'That's their way of saying hello. — Kate Betts

New sales managers are the forgotten rookie - they were pros at selling, but all of a sudden they're a rookie at management. — Chris Lytle

Good programmers stay open minded to that even though there is no obvious way to improve what they've done they ... they keep looking and they listen to what other people have to say. — Bill Gates

You wanna know something," was Dad's refrain while we were growing up, "get a book." Of course,he predates Google, but it stuck with me. — Melissa Jensen

I don't predict the demise of object-oriented programming, by the way. Though I don't think it has much to offer good programmers, except in certain specialized domains, it is irresistible to large organizations. Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years as it is today. — Paul Graham

Any fool can write a test that helps them today. Good programmers write tests that help the entire team in the future. — Anonymous

When you choose a language, youre also choosing a community. The programmers youll be able to hire to work on a Java project wont be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages. — Philip Greenspun

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

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships. — Linus Torvalds

The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully. — Alan Kay

One of her secret fantasies had been that, as a girl who could code, she would work in the one place where a geeky fat girl could get dates. It had not been entirely untrue. But as someone had pointed out to her in school, although the odds are good, the goods are odd. — Maureen F. McHugh

I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. — Kent Beck

Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't. — David Gelernter

You are reading this book for two reasons. First, you are a programmer. Second, you want to be a better programmer. Good. We need better programmers. — Robert C. Martin

I've known people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer. — Kent Beck

Beyond basic mathematical aptitude, the difference between good programmers and great programmers is verbal ability. — Marissa Mayer

Just as it is necessary to breathe out regularly in order to receive fresh air into the lungs, so it is necessary to give regularly if we wish to receive regularly. — Catherine Ponder

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse) — Eric S. Raymond

I'd go home to a wife whom I was not sexually enjoying. — Mark Driscoll

Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. — Paul Graham

The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones. They are an order-of-magnitude better, measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity of design, or problem-solving ability. — Randall E. Stross

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

I find that creative streak I think often leads in programmers to be good predictors of where culture as a whole is going to go. And that is where I think I've tried over the years to in some ways use my customers as a filter or a predictor of where technology as a whole is going to go. Or where the world as a whole is going to go. — Tim O'Reilly

She had a theory that the fear of getting in trouble was what made her not as good a programmer and that, in fact, it was all linked to testosterone, and that was why there were more guy programmers than women. It was a very hazy theory, and she didn't like it, but she had pretty much convinced herself it was true, although she couldn't bear to think of sharing it with anybody, because it was a lot better to think that there were social reasons why girls didn't usually become code monkeys than to think there were biological reasons. — Maureen F. McHugh

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

I rode a streetcar to the edge of the city limits, then I started to walk, swinging the old thumb whenever I saw a car coming. — Jim Thompson