Computer Programming Quotes

“On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”
― Satoru Iwata

“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”
― Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman

“I suggested that someone grab Bill Gates and get him to install a new operating system, but apparently he's not a demon" At Reaver's eye roll she nodded. "Right? I was surprised too.”
― Larissa Ione, Reaver

“In the end, it all comes down to 0 and 1”
― Vineet Goel

“We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.

A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer's idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer's spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.

A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer's apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.”
― Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

“Old Enochian running on neural wetware is not the fastest procedural language ever invented, and it’s semantics make AppleScript look like a thing of elegance and beauty”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“If the discipline of requirements specification has taught us anything, it is that well-specified requirements are as formal as code and can act as executable tests of that code!”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

“An activity originally intended to be performed by low-status, clerical – and more often than not, female – computer programming was gradually and deliberately transformed into a high-status, scientific, and masculine discipline.”
― Nathan L. Ensmenger

“Higher-order functions allow us to abstract over actions, not just values.”
― Marijn Haverbeke, Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming

“I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded--which was a major breakthrough in itself--the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net--that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine...Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net.”
― John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider

“Computer hacking was like a chemical bond holding us all together.”
― Rachel Zhang, The Emotional Embodiment of Stars

“It has to become second nature, for a programmer, to notice when a concept is begging to be abstracted into a new word.”
― Marijn Haverbeke

“In the happy land of elegant code and pretty rainbows, there lives a spoil-sport monster called inefficiency.”
― Marijn Haverbeke, Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming

“If you are too lazy to cleanup your database after testing, your filesystem after testing or your memory based system consider moving to a different profession. This isn't a job for you.”
― Roy Osherove, The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .NET

“I’ve always had very strong feeling that computer programming is a godlike kind of job.
Similar to the Lord creating our material world and whole the Universe, based on molecular techniques such as DNA coding ― developers create the digital world based on IT technologies coding.”
― Sahara Sanders, Indigo Diaries: A Series of Novels

“No technology that's connected to the internet is unhackable.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gospel of Technology

“End-to-End encryption is practically a meaningless phrase used by internet-based companies to coax people into believing the modern myth of online privacy.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“The LSP makes clear that in OOD the ISA relationship pertains to behavior. Not intrinsic private behavior, but extrinsic public behavior; behavior that clients depend upon.”
― Robert C. Martin, LSP: The Liskov Substitution Principle

“People who aren't steeped in software often have an unrealistically non-horrified view of software quality.”
― Matt Blaze

“Da li si se ikada zapitao ko može više da sazna – čovek ili kompjuter? Zavodljiva je ta dilema. Ono što treba da znaš jeste da i čovek i kompjuter sve što saznaju mogu da potisnu i zaborave, smeštanjem u zabačeni folder stvarnosti, ali nikada, nikada... Da obrišu. I čovek i kompjuter su skladišta, sa dosta prozora koji ti mogu omogućiti da zaviriš u njih, ne i da uđeš unutra. Tamo možeš ući samo ako dobro poznaješ teren – čoveka ili kompjuter. Ako poželiš da ih upoznaš, dodirni ih tamo gde ih boli. Nema čoveka niti sistema bez slabosti ili greške. Zbog grešaka u sistemu može stradati računar, zbog grešaka u čoveku najčešće strada drugi čovek. Sistem ima nas hakere koji pronalazimo i otklanjamo kvar, uz adekvatnu zaštitu da do kvara ponovo ne dođe. Čovek sa kvarom, čovek sa greškom... Nema nikoga osim nade da nepravda čuva tajne i straha da će tajna biti otkrivena.”
― Tamara Kučan, Profajler

“Pretending to have sentience is not the same as having sentience.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“If it is artificial intelligence we are trying to develop, then there is no need for concern, for no matter how smart an AI gets, it’ll still not be able to defy the programming of its creator, but if it is artificial sentience we want to develop, then we must rethink.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“If a machine ever gains awareness, it will be not due to our careful programming, but due to an unforeseeable anomaly.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gospel of Technology

“Thinking about small things every day from today will lead you to rise to the ranks of Donald Knuth and Alan Turing in a few years.”
― Aditya Chatterjee, How to read a Computer Science Research paper?

“Leaving society to algorithms will be like leaving healthcare to stethoscopes.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gospel of Technology

“I have so much information stored up inside my brain that to add more I need to clean out my mind's cache once in awhile.”
― James Hauenstein

“Every machine has artificial intelligence. And the more advanced a machine gets, the more advanced artificial intelligence gets as well. But, a machine cannot feel what it is doing. It only follows instructions - our instructions - instructions of the humans. So, artificial intelligence will not destroy the world. Our irresponsibility will destroy the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“If the universe is an artificial simulation then the mathematics is its code and a physicist is a programmer.”
― Shubham Sanap

“Algorithm without humanity is digital barbarism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“It's easy to mistake familiarity with computers for intelligence, but computer literate certainly doesn't equal smart. And computer illiterate sure doesn't mean stupid.
Which do we need more: computer literacy or literacy?”
― Clifford Stoll, High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian