eshwar's Web World: Good Programming Quotations

If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge.

Henry Spencer

Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.

Kernighan & Plauger, The Elements of Programming Style.

It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free.

Steve McConnell Code Complete

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilisation.

Gerald Weinberg

Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.

Kreitzberg and Shneiderman

Testing by itself does not improve software quality. Test results are an indicator of quality, but in and of themselves, they don't improve it. Trying to improve software quality by increasing the amount of testing is like trying to lose weight by weighing yourself more often. What you eat before you step onto the scale determines how much you will weigh, and the software development techniques you use determine how many errors testing will find. If you want to lose weight, don't buy a new scale; change your diet. If you want to improve your software, don't test more; develop better.

Steve McConnell Code Complete

Once a new technology starts rolling, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

Stewart Brand

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Flannery O'Connor

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to to, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.