Programmer Quotes & Sayings

Programming is how we talk to the machines that are increasingly woven into our lives. If you aren't a programmer, you're like one of the unlettered people of the Middle Ages who were told what to think by the literate priesthood. We had a Renaissance when more people could read and write; we'll have another one when everyone programs. — Tim O'Reilly

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

It's better to wait for a productive programmer to become available than it is to wait for the first available programmer to become productive. — Steve McConnell

Unix is simple and coherent, but it takes a genius (or at any rate, a programmer) to understand and appreciate the simplicity.. — Dennis Ritchie

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

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause. — Orson Scott Card

I know you are thinking 'logically' like a programmer because you got used to doing so for many years now, but this is more related to the heart. I don't think you'd understand that. — Sriharsha Sripada

It's a very complex network of genes making products which go into the nucleus and turn on other genes. And, in fact, you find a continuing network of processes going on in a very complex way by which genes are subject to these continual adjustments, as you might say - the computer programmer deciding which genes ultimately will work. — John Gurdon

Are you allowing your own expectations to hinder you from freely expressing yourself? Is your idea of the right way keeping you from your best way? Are you too distracted to show up? Are you living like a programmer instead of a poet? — Emily P. Freeman

In all likelihood, you've been treated by a Muslim doctor or served by a Muslim waiter or worked beside a Muslim computer programmer. Even if you think, 'I don't know any Muslims,' it's probably not true. — G. Willow Wilson

I don't like the feeling, but I've got to say that a little fear makes me a more focused, more responsible programmer. — Kent Beck

I'm not a computer person at all. I only know how to turn them on. I'm not a programmer. I couldn't program my way out of a paper bag. — Rick Smolan

I didn't realize how good I was with technology until I met my parents ... my dad told me "You're good; you should be a computer programmer." I said, "You're bad ... you should be a caveman." — Mike Birbiglia

When you have a programmer-founded company it often gets really techy, if you have a producer or a business-person, it all really sets the flavor of the company, just the priorities and the way you deal with everything. — Tim Schafer

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris. — Larry Wall

The act of focusing our mightiest intellectual resources on the elusive goal of goto-less programs has helped us get our minds off all those really tough and possibly unresolvable problems and issues with which today's professional programmer would otherwise have to grapple — John Brown

To a programmer, an operating system is defined by its API. — Charles Petzold

If you program a purpose into a computer program, does that constitute its will? Does it have free will, if a programmer programmed its purpose? Is that programming any different from the way we are programmed by our genes and brains? Is a programmed will a servile will? Is human will a servile will? And is not the servile will the home and source of all feelings of defilement, infection, transgression, and rage? — Kim Stanley Robinson

Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later. — John Carmack

When I was at college there were two things I vowed I'd never do. One was go to a funeral and the other was deal with computers. And then I ended up being a computer programmer in a morgue. — Patricia Cornwell

The difference between the best worker on computer hardware and the average may be 2 to 1, if you're lucky. With automobiles, maybe 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 25 to 1. The difference between the average programmer and a great one is at least that. The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. And when you're in a field where the dynamic range is 25 to 1, boy, does it pay off. — Steve Jobs

It always helps to be a good programmer. It is important to like computers and to be able to think of things people would want to do with their computers. — Bill Budge

When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate its correctness in a convincing manner, then the above remarks have a profound influence on the programmer's activity: the object he has to produce must be usefully structured. — Edsger Dijkstra

Colossal Cave (also known as Adventure - not to be confused with the Atari VCS game of the same name) was developed by assembly-language programmer William Crowther — Anonymous

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society ... Writing is today's currency for good ideas. — Jason Fried

And, I think that is actually appropriate because I'm really not the world's best programmer, I think it's a good thing that I'm not touching the code. — Brian Behlendorf

I am a composer, horn player, and computer programmer. — Robert Patterson

The Vedic viewpoint presents a type of linguistic realism in which reality is the 'text' which is being processed by the observer. Reality can also be modified by adding text to it similar to how a programmer programs a computer by inputting a computer program. — Ashish Dalela

Implement "is a" through public inheritance. When a programmer decides to create a new class by inheriting from an existing class, that programmer is saying that the new class "is a" more specialized version of the older class. The base class sets expectations about how the derived class will operate and imposes constraints on how the derived class can operate (Meyers 1998). — Steve McConnell

On small, informal projects, a lot of design is done while the programmer sits at the keyboard. "Design" might be just writing a class interface in pseudocode before writing the details. It might be drawing diagrams of a few class relationships before coding them. It might be asking another programmer which design pattern seems like a better choice. Regardless of how it's done, small projects benefit from careful design just as larger projects do, and recognizing design as an explicit activity maximizes the benefit you will receive from it. — Steve McConnell

We could talk, act, and dress funny. We were excused for socially inappropriate behavior: 'Oh, he's a programmer'. It was all because we knew this technology stuff that other people found completely mystifying. — Kent Beck

An algorithm is like a recipe. — Waseem Latif

This works, but it's hard to imagine that anybody except a hard-core functional programmer would consider it pretty. — Anonymous

Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for the average programmer, you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner. — Edsger Dijkstra

I write them to improve my productivity as a programmer. Making the quality assurance department happy is just a side effect. Unit tests are highly localized. Each test class works within a single package. It tests the interfaces to other packages, but beyond that it assumes the rest just works.

Functional tests are a different animal. They are written to ensure the software as a whole works. They provide quality assurance to the customer and don't care about programmer productivity. They should be developed by a different team, one who delights in finding bugs. — Martin Fowler

It's funny: I was a photographer before I was a programmer. — Kevin Systrom

A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. — Doug Linder

My first job was as a programmer. So I feel like I'm familiar with the information technology sector and the information technology culture. — Gene Luen Yang

Larry Wall's classic Programming Perl described the three programmer's virtues: hubris, laziness, and impatience. — C.J.S. Hayward

Space camp was actually, like, the best summer of my life. It was amazing. But I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer, and among computer science folks, Turing is this object of cult-like fascination. — Graham Moore

Not having a schedule is OK if it's your PhD and you plan to spend 14 years on the thing, or if you're a programmer working on the next Duke Nukem and we'll ship when we're good and ready. But for almost any kind of real business, you just have to know how long things are going to take, because developing a product costs money. — Joel Spolsky

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops. — Joseph Weizenbaum

The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Betty Snyder, who, under her married name, Betty Holberton, went on to become a pioneer programmer who helped develop the COBOL and Fortran languages, — Walter Isaacson

All the things I used to count on to get my music out there - record companies, they're all gone. And radio stations, they're gone - they're completely controlled by the government. If they're not controlled by the government, they're controlled by a programmer who's controlled by the government. Mainstream radio is suspect. You can't trust it. — Neil Young

The programmer who refuses to keep exploring will surely stagnate, forget his joy, lose the will to program (and become a manager). — Marijn Haverbeke

Every application has an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. The only question is who will have to deal with it, the user or the developer (programmer or engineer). — Larry Tesler

The computer programmer creates the only path available to the computer user; the effect of his decisions on others is masked by their abstraction. — Michael Lewis

Computer languages of the future will be more concerned with goals and less with procedures specified by the programmer. — Marvin Minsky

Like the famous mad philosopher said, when you stare into the void, the void stares also; but if you cast into the void, you get a type conversion error. (Which just goes to show Nietzsche wasn't a C++ programmer.) — Charles Stross

Hire great writers If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. — Jason Fried

Think twice, code once. — Waseem Latif

Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free. — Richard Stallman

To be a programmer is to develop a carefully managed relationship with error. There's no getting around it. You either make your accomodations with failure, or the work will become intolerable. — Ellen Ullman

He'd chased Vasquez for nine days now. Someone had warned the programmer just before Cooper got to the Boston walk-up, a brick rectangle where the only light had been a window onto an airshaft and the glowing red eyes of power indicators on computers and routers and surge protectors. The desk chair had been against the far wall as if someone had leaped out of it, and steam still rose from an abandoned bowl of ramen. — Marcus Sakey

It is, therefore, possible to extend a partially specified interpretation to a complete interpretation, without loss of verifiability, [ ... ] This fact offers the possibility of automatic verification of programs, the programmer merely tagging entrances and one edge in each innermost loop. — Robert W. Floyd

When I got started, I was a sideshow. At my first Consumer Electronics Show, in 1977 in Chicago, people came from all over the floor to see the 'lady programmer.' They had me dressed in a turquoise lab coat with my name embroidered on the pocket. — Brenda Laurel

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

The error which underlies the very existence of this debate is that there is some kind of perfect Platonic form of the computer language, which some real languages reflect more perfectly than others. Plato was brilliant for his time but reality is not expressable in terms of arbitrary visions of perfection, and furthermore, one programmer's ideal is often another's hell. — Paul Vixie

I'm always thinking about songs, I'm thinking of life maybe a little bit more lyrically than a computer programmer or someone like that. — Jon Foreman

inheritance is a powerful tool for reducing complexity because a programmer can focus on the generic attributes of an object without worrying about the details. If a programmer must be constantly thinking about semantic differences in subclass implementations, then inheritance is increasing complexity rather than reducing it. — Steve McConnell

I am a programmer. — Ken Thompson

Debugging: what an odd word. As if "bugging" were the job of putting in bugs, and debugging the task of removing them. But no. The job of putting in bugs is called programming. A programmer writes some code and inevitably makes the mistakes that result in the malfunctions called bugs. Then, for some period of time, normally longer than the time it takes to design and write the code in the first place, the programmer tries to remove the mistakes. — Ellen Ullman

When the superior programmer refrains from coding, his force is felt for a thousand miles. — Eric S. Raymond

Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul. — John Carmack

When fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor. — Fred Brooks

At fifty years old and many years into her second career, she reinvented herself as a computer programmer. — Margot Lee Shetterly

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

We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses. — Alan Perlis

By trade, I am a software programmer, so I never really had any experience with movies before. I started out with 'Paranormal Activity.' — Oren Peli

A program can only do what it's programmed to do, to the letter of the law. Unfortunately, what's written doesn't always coincide with what the programmer intended the program to do. — Anonymous

Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better. — Donald Knuth

Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. — Eric Raymond

The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. — Larry Wall

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

From a programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request. — Pharrell Williams

When they reached a maintenance closet, Iko ushered the escort-droid inside.
"I want you to know that I hold nothing against you," she said, by way of introduction. "I understand that it isn't your fault your programmer had so little imagination."
The escort-droid held her gaze with empty eyes.
"In another life, we could have been sisters, and I feel it's important to acknowledge that."
A blank stare. A blink, every six seconds.
"But as it stands, I'm a part of an important mission right now, and I cannot be swayed from my goal by my sympathy for androids who are less advanced than myself."
Nothing.
"All right then." Iko held out her hands. "I need your clothes. — Marissa Meyer

The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large. — Donald Knuth

If you think you're a really good programmer ... read Knuth's Art of Computer Programming ... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing. — Bill Gates

Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to. — Sherry Turkle

The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague. — Edsger Dijkstra

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer. — Edsger Dijkstra

I have never seen an experienced programmer who routinely made detailed flow charts before beginning to write programs. — Fred Brooks

I was hired as a computer programmer for a national laboratory at age 15. — Andy Weir

As a programmer, it is your job to put yourself out of business. What you do today can be automated tomorrow. — Douglas McIlroy

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

The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late. — Seymour Cray

If you can create something useful, its reachable audience (e.g., employers or customers) is essentially limitless - which greatly magnifies your reward. On the other hand, if what you're producing is mediocre, then you're in trouble, as it's too easy for your audience to find a better alternative online. Whether you're a computer programmer, writer, marketer, consultant, or entrepreneur, your situation has become similar to Jung trying to outwit Freud, or Jason Benn trying to hold his own in a hot start-up: To succeed you have to produce the absolute best stuff you're capable of producing - a task that requires depth. — Cal Newport

I'm still a really shitty programmer, but I know enough to hack a prototype together. — Dennis Crowley

The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea. — Rick Cook

The truth is I'm not actually an expert programmer! I really don't consider myself to be an expert at anything. For me, it's more about having a well-rounded and broad horizon. I think that's where a lot of the more interesting things come from - mashing up completely disparate aspects of life to create something new and original. — Aaron Koblin

But to me, each revision of the document simply showed how far the initial Flevel implementation had progressed. Those parts of the language that were not yet implemented were still described in free-flowing flowery prose giving promise of unalloyed delight. In the parts that had been implemented, the flowers had withered; they were choked by an undergrowth of explanatory footnotes, placing arbitrary and unpleasant restrictions on the use of each feature and loading upon a programmer the responsibility for controlling the complex and unexpected side-effects and interaction effects with all the other features of the language. — C.A.R. Hoare

From the viewpoint of what you can do, therefore, languages do differ - but the differences are limited. For example, Python and Ruby provide almost the same power to the programmer. — Yukihiro Matsumoto

The use of the high level language made each programmer a factor of 5 to 10 more productive in a coding sense and more concerned with the semantics than the syntax of modules. — Fernando J. Corbato

The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture — Fred Brooks

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 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

It would've been amazing [to work as programmer]. You're good at numbers, you're good with people, you like to wear shorts in the summertime. — Jimmy Fallon

Your identity should not be fully defined by what you do, by being a manager, a wife, a mother of children or a computer programmer — Sunday Adelaja