To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program..

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures..

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works..

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them..

The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland, but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman..

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..

One man's constant is another man's variable..

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop..

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant..

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis..

Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve..

C programmers never die. They are just cast into void..

In man-machine symbiosis, it is man who must adjust: The machines can't..

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm..

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up..

In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble..

You think you KNOW when you learn, are more sure when you can write, even more when you can teach, but certain when you can program..

Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it..

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of co….