Real Programmers Quotes & Sayings

Yeah, young coders abound, but mostly only string together preassembled digital beads, and even today's brightest young nerdlets aren't immune to eventual wrinkles. As for real experts, well, as the dawn of the computer age recedes, so too have the hairlines of your true computer wizards, the males I mean. We females never change, we are eternally young. — Rajnar Vajra

In the beginning, there were Real Programmers. — Eric S. Raymond

The best designers and the best programmers aren't the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with Photoshop or their environment of choice, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn't matter. That's where the real gains are made. — Jason Fried

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. — Larry Wall

Object-oriented programming as it emerged in Simula 67 allows software structure to be based on real-world structures, and gives programmers a powerful way to simplify the design and construction of complex programs. — David Gelernter

Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night. — Tom Van Vleck

Real programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. — Tom Van Vleck

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. — Tom Van Vleck

I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests. — Rasmus Lerdorf

As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct. — Larry Wall