Quotes on Programming

Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.

In engineering, as in other creative arts, we must learn to do analysis to support our efforts in synthesis. One cannot build a beautiful and functional bridge without a knowledge of steel and dirt, and a considerable mathematical technique for using this knowledge to compute the properties of structures. Similarly, one cannot build a beautiful computer system without a deep understanding of how to "previsualize" the process generated by the code one writes.

The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.

Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not understanding, Understanding is not wisdom.

In a way, math isn't the art of answering mathematical questions, it is the art of asking the right questions, the questions that give you insight, the ones that lead you in interesting directions, the ones that connect with lots of other interesting questions -the ones with beautiful answers.

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

This attitude [the abstract method in mathematics] can be encapsulated in the following slogan: a mathematical object is what it does.

Most of the good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

I find that writing unit tests actually increases my programming speed

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

We are born into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed. . . . We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist's maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action.

If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.

Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them to be grammarians.

The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environnement.

Technology will save us if it doesn't wipe us out first.

Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another.

A successful person isn't necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relive the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption.