Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Any noun can be verbed.
Optimization hinders evolution.
In English every word can be verbed.
There is no such thing as a free variable.
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.
LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't.
Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
Motto for a research laboratory: what we work on today, others will first think of tomorrow.
Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed - it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.
When a professor insists computer science is X but not Y, have compassion for his graduate students.
Adapting old programs to fit new machines usually means adapting new machines to behave like old ones.
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.
Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.
Because of its vitality, the computing field is always in desperate need of new cliches: Banality soothes our nerves.
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.