Recent posts
- What I cannot build, I do not understand.
- Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.
- There is no programming language, no matter how structured, that will prevent programmers from making bad programs.
- Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
- The problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.
- You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself.
- A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
- The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.
- The only sin is to make a choice without knowing you are making one.
- So much complexity in software comes from trying to make one thing do two things.
- Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
- First, solve the problem. Then, write the code.
- A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
- Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people’s mistakes.
- There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
- The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague
- When in doubt, leave it out.
- I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.
- Never memorize something that you can look up.
- Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.