The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. -- Larry Wall (Programming Perl)
I think it is wise, and only honest, to warn you that my goal is immodest. It is not my purpose to "transfer knowledge" to you that, subsequently, you can forget again. My purpose is no less than to effectuate in each of you a noticeable, irreversable change. I want you to gain, for the rest of your lives, the insight that beautiful proofs are not "found" by trial anf error but are the result of a consciously applied design discipline. I want you to raise your quality standards. I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself "Dijkstra would not have liked this", well, that would be enough immortality for me. -- E. W. Dijkstra
I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind. -- Alan Kay
Well, if you talk about programming to a group of programmers who use the same language, they can become almost evangelistic about the language. They form a tight-knit community, hold to certain beliefs, and follow certain rules in their programming. It’s like a church with a programming language for a Bible. -- Gary Kildall (inventor of CP/M, one of the first OS for the micro).
Good ideas are out there for anyone with the wit and the will to find them. -- Malcolm Gladwell, Who says big ideas are rare?
Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot. -- Eric S. Raymond
You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction. ~George Lorimer
If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents- start charging for it. ~Kim Garst
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein