Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards removed. (Bob Gray) There are only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’. (Edward Tufte) It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. (E. W. Dijkstra) A hacker on a roll may be able to produce–in a period of a few months–something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. IBM used to report that certain programmers might be as much as 100 times as productive as other workers, or more. (Peter Seebach)

To iterate is human, to recurse divine. (L. Peter Deutsch) Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. (Bill Gates) I think there’s a world market for about 5 computers. (Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM, circa 1948) Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning. (Rick Cook) Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is. (Larry Wall)