Quotes & Sayings About Programming

Somebody gave me this drum machine and somebody else asked me to program something for a project. I really liked programming and I was really interested in using the drum machine. — Ikue Mori

I didn't know that empty rationalization was part of your programming," said Ram.
"We would not be fit companions for human beings without it. — Orson Scott Card

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

Experience shows that the success of a programming course critically depends on the choice of these examples. — Niklaus Wirth

What's in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it that you can make it more. — Alan J. Perlis

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

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

The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on. — Douglas Rushkoff

Invention is arrived at by intelligent stumbling. — Amar Bose

Churches for churched people obsess over the most frivolous, inconsequential things. It's why you dread your board meetings, your elder meetings, and your committee meetings. You rarely talk about anything important. You're managing found people. I know you care about un-found people in your heart. But do you care in your schedule, your programming, your preaching style, or your budget? — Andy Stanley

Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy. — Niklaus Wirth

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

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

Accessing shared, mutable data requires using synchronization; one way to avoid this requirement is to not share. If data is only accessed from a single thread, no synchronization is needed. This technique, thread confinement, is one of the simplest ways to achieve thread safety. When an object is confined to a thread, such usage is automatically thread-safe even if the confined object itself is not. — Brian Goetz

What is a human mind? Memories. Memories are data. Character, personality, individual volition. Those are programming. — George R R Martin

By becoming mindful of our cultural programming, we can step out of it. — Christiane Northrup

Pretty much all the programming on our CDs is done by me personally, so I've kind of been able to have complete control of what sounds I'm looking for to complete a song. — Tyler Joseph

I later became more interested in equal rights for women in the work place because of what was happening at IBM. One of the women at Remington Rand had previously been a system service girl for IBM during the war. After a system was installed, a system service girl would go out and show the users how it worked. She was the liaison between the users and the computer company. She was married and had been fired to make room for a returning veteran. When the war ended, IBM rehired all of its former employees who had left to join the military, then fired all of the married women with jobs that could be filled by men. — Jean Jennings Bartik

Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment. — Kent Beck

When I do programming in my free time and for my own enjoyment, I really want to have a kind of protection: knowing that when I improve a program those improvements will continue to be available to me and others in future versions of the program. — Linus Torvalds

I started working at Bravo in 2005, when I was offered a job by Lauren Zalaznick, the network's chairman. She encouraged me to start a blog. I wrote behind-the-scenes gossip about 'Battle of the Network Reality Stars,' the first show I took on as head of current programming. — Andy Cohen

There's a really rough and relatively consistent hierarchy of concerns. My musical interests come first and principally my fascination with how notes and rhythms interlock. Then comes the technical side like programming, instruments and designing instruments. Next is production and mixing and beyond that I start to care less. — Squarepusher

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users'. — Edward Tufte

I prefer to be refuted than to refute, for it is a greater good for oneself to be freed from the greatest evil than to free another. — Socrates

Distributed programming is the art of solving the same problem that you can solve on a single computer using multiple computers. — Mikito Takada

There is people who make stuff with words. There is people who make stuff with programs. And I really believe that that whole creative culture, people didn't realize how creative programming is. And anybody who's done it of course knows that not only is it creative, but it's incredibly absorbing. — Tim O'Reilly

Are you still an android?" Cinder said around a bite of toast. "Sometimes I forget." "Me too." Iko ducked her head. "When we saw the feed of you jumping off that ledge, I was so scared I thought my wiring was going to catch fire. And I thought, I will do anything to make sure she's all right." She kicked at a pile of stray screws on the carpet. "I guess some programming never goes away, no matter how evolved a personality chip gets." Licking some jam from her fingertips, Cinder grinned. "That's not programming, you wing nut. That's friendship." Iko's eyes brightened. — Marissa Meyer

A smart terminal is not a smartass terminal, but rather a terminal you can educate. — Rob Pike

If our style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can re-create ourselves, or rather, we can re-create the Infinite Goof within us. We can live on top of content, float above the predictable responses, social programming and hereditary circuitry, letting the bits of color and electricity and light filter up to us, where we may incorporate them at will into our actions. That's what the voices said. They said that content is what a man harbors but does not parade. And I love a parade. — Tom Robbins

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

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. — Edsger Dijkstra

I don't think people realize the extent to which TV networks are hurt when they carry public broadcasting. I think the estimate is that they lose a half-million dollars for a half day's programming. — Roone Arledge

Are you quite sure that all those bells and whistles, all those wonderful facilities of your so called powerful programming languages, belong to the solution set rather than the problem set? — Edsger Dijkstra

Television has certain imperatives that CNN had the luxury of ignoring for a long period of time. CNN could take the position that the news would be the star, because in most of the programming day, they were the only all-news operation on the air. — Brit Hume

Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers. — Eric S. Raymond

Whenever more than one thread accesses a given state variable, and one of them might write to it, they all must coordinate their access to it using synchronization. — Brian Goetz

Ask not first what the system does; ask what it does it to! — Bertrand Meyer

It is far easier to design a class to be thread-safe than to retrofit it for thread safety later. — Brian Goetz

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

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

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

The initial motive for developing APL was to provide a tool for writing and teaching. Although APL has been exploited mostly in commercial programming, I continue to believe that its most important use remains to be exploited: as a simple, precise, executable notation for the teaching of a wide range of subjects. — Kenneth E. Iverson

Pop music seems to be the way radio programming has chosen to support female artists. They have chosen not to support a more provocative voice from women, which I find disappointing. — Shirley Manson

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

Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik's posse had destroyed the scenario's promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She'd killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn't getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine. — S.J. Kincaid

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically. — Bill Gates

When it comes to storytelling, not taking risks is riskier than swinging for the fences. I have very simple ambitions when it comes to taking risks in storytelling and programming. I try very hard to avoid the expected. — David Nevins

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

Dialogue unplugs you from your own programming as you become more real; debate turns up the voltage and entrenches you more deeply. — Oli Anderson

Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming. — Rob Pike

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess. — Tom Shales

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

Only in high school when I began programming computers, did I become interested in tech and start-ups, which led me to attend Stanford and major in Computer Science. — Clara Shih

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

NBC was trying to convert all of their local programming to color right away to encourage the sale of the sets, so I barely remember working in black and white, although I do know that I did do it, but there was not a major difference, though. — Jim Henson

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

I think one of the prophets stuttered when he dictated your specs," Jal said, snickering. "Or the gene-splicer was daydreaming about his high-status trueborn love and he botched your programming. — Karen Sandler

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

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

If the system exhibits a structure which can be represented by a mathematical equivalent, called a mathematical model, and if the objective can be also so quantified, then some computational method may be evolved for choosing the best schedule of actions among alternatives. Such use of mathematical models is termed mathematical programming. — George Dantzig

No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor -- to anchor an embryo and forever end its mobile phase, however passive that mobility was. Once the first root is extended, the plant will never again enjoy any hope (however feeble) of relocating to a place less cold, less dry, less dangerous. Indeed, it will face frost, drought, and greedy jaws without any possibility of flight. The tiny rootlet has only once chance to guess what the future years, decades -- even centuries -- will bring to the patch of soil where it sits. It assesses the light and humidity of the moment, refers to its programming, and quite literally takes the plunge. — Hope Jahren

Expectation loiters in the DNA of every sentient being; when you tell yourself or a loved one, 'Don't get your hopes up,' you're fighting ancient genetic programming. — Martha Beck

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. — Edward Berard

Through educational programming, Jewish American History Month will help raise the awareness of a people, their history and contributions. It will help combat anti-Semitism, a phenomenon that is on the rise and that unfortunately still exists in our Nation. — Jan Schakowsky

Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design. — Joel Spolsky

Programming in Go is like being young again (but more productive!). — Anneli Jaatteenmaki

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

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

Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers. — Chris Hardwick

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

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

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

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

Don't gloss over a routine or piece of code involved in the bug because you "know" it works. Prove it. Prove it in this context, with this data, with these boundary conditions. — Andrew Hunt

I've enjoyed programming on NPR, but 'we're broke' and therefore all spending must be reduced. — Jaime Herrera Beutler

The displacement of scripted series by reality programming continues to be a severe obstacle to a working actor's ability to earn a living. — Alan Rosenberg

With programmes such as flooding of emotions, the parts involved might not feel safe in turning the programme off. But you might be able to negotiate that they turn it down so it is barely noticeable. Or you could ask the spinner parts to spin in the opposite direction, so that they spin the effects back into the part who originally held those feelings rather than out to the rest of the system. Or you could insert a hidden drain and start draining out some of the feelings. Or you could find a way for the parts doing their jobs to implement the programme without doing harm. p126-127 — Alison Miller

Programming is the art of doing one thing at a time — Michael C. Feathers

How peculiar. Perhaps it's a programming glitch." She stared down into Iko's single sensor. "A programming glitch." "Sure. You have programming, don't you?" Iko lifted a spindly arm and gestured toward Cinder's steel prosthetic. "I have a glitch, too. Sometimes I forget that I'm not human. I don't think that happens to most androids." Cinder — Marissa Meyer

Programming requires more concentration than other activities. It's the reason programmers get upset about 'quick interruptions' - such interruptions are tantamount to asking a juggler to keep three balls in the air and hold your groceries at the same time. — Steve McConnell

In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning. — Maimonides

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

Ruby on Rails is a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming.
Powerful web applications that formerly might have taken weeks or months
to develop can be produced in a matter of days. — Tim O'Reilly

Just as it is a good practice to make all fields private unless they need greater visibility, it is a good practice to make all fields final unless they need to be mutable. — Brian Goetz

Stupidity is the only natural capital offense. — Robert A. Heinlein

We make programming decisions on a day-to-day basis. We sell advertising on a day-to-day basis. This is the way networks operate. This is the way all television stations operate. This is the way most businesses operate when you have a number of affiliates or a number of franchises. It's the way the business operates. — Mark E. Hyman

Men have always wanted to have sex with as many fertile young women as possible. It's part of a man's basic programming. That hasn't changed. Civilization is nothing more than an artificial and very thin veneer hiding our deep-seated primitive urges. — Oliver Markus

When there is no type hierarchy you don't have to manage the type hierarchy. — Rob Pike

But if you kept thinking about a fight you'd lost, Mom said, you were programming yourself to lose again. — Karen Russell

I feel like there is just as much violent programming in other countries and there is not the same incidence of factors. I think there are other factors contributing to violence in this country and not the media. — Sara Gilbert

I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location. — Jerry Pournelle

Don't count out other amazing programming like Frontline. You will still find more hours of in-depth news programming, investigative journalism and analysis on PBS than on any other outlet. — Gwen Ifill

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge. — Grace Hopper

It took me 1057 pages to describe the hundreds of mathematical equations, algorithms and programming techniques that I invented and used. — Philip Emeagwali

Giving up an addiction means re-programming that part of your brain that makes you restless and unhappy if a desire is not realized. — Ken Keyes Jr.

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

You Can't Write Perfect Software. Did that hurt? It shouldn't. Accept it as an axiom of life. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Because perfect software doesn't exist. No one in the brief history of computing has ever written a piece of perfect software. It's unlikely that you'll be the first. And unless you accept this as a fact, you'll end up wasting time and energy chasing an impossible dream. — Andrew Hunt

The battle against good and evil is raging now! Look at your television programming and movie advertisements presenting the occult ... the demonic ... the satanic ... the practice of witchcraft and sorcery in popular books ... the open hostility toward Christianity and the revival of anti-Semitism. The fight is on for the hearts and minds of our children in ours homes, our schools, our universities, and our society. — John Hagee

We are not the personalities that our egos are so valiantly defending. Our personalities are simply the result of our current programming. — Ken Keyes Jr.

The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. — Michel Foucault