Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Software developers

Code never lies, comments sometimes do.

Teaching peers is one of the best ways to develop mastery.

If you don't know how compilers work, then you don't know how computers work.

Chaos and Order are not enemies, only opposites. Chaos and Order combined equal balance.

Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges, and it causes end-user and administrator frustration.

Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries. An attitude has no boundaries, so we wouldn't ask 'can I use agile here', but rather 'how would I act in the agile way here?' or 'how agile can we be, here?'

When I evaluate a candidate, one of the most important criteria is what I call “the first derivative.” Is this person learning? Is this candidate moving forward, or have they stagnated.

It's not virtual reality until you can be tortured to death in it.

Testing is the process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous, so as to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.

I think intellectual property is more like land, and copyright violation is more like trespass. Even though you don't take anything away from the landowner when you trespass, most people understand and respect the laws that make it illegal. The real crime in copyright violation is not the making of the copies, it's the expropriation of the creator's right to control the creation.

Reusing pieces of code is like picking off sentences from other people's stories and trying to make a magazine article.

When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say 'wow, that was an adventure,' not 'wow, I sure felt safe.'

Scrum is like your mother-in-law, it points out ALL your faults.

Any Scrum without working product at the end of a sprint is a failed Scrum.

The measure of a man cannot be whether he ever makes mistakes, because he will make mistakes. It's what he does in response to his mistakes. The same is true of companies. We have to apologize, we have to fix the problem, and we have to learn from our mistakes.

I'm not rich because I invented VisiCalc, but I feel that I've made a change in the world. That's a satisfaction money can't buy.

It's extremely disturbing and unsettling that Sony has taken digital rights management to this level of deceit.

There are cases where you design something that looks good on paper and there's only one small part of it that's fun. You have to focus on that and throw the rest away.

I estimate that 75% of those organizations using Scrum will not succeed in getting the benefits that they hope for from it.

Stealing is OK as long as it's done well.

When we use a language, we should commit ourselves to knowing it, being able to read it, and writing it idiomatically.

If you don't have people that care about usability on your project, your project is doomed.

The lesson is: Even if you know exactly what is going on in you system, measure performance, don't speculate. You'll learn something, and nine times out of ten, it won't be that you were right!!

Regardless of past aspirations, this is the right time to be focusing on services for two specific reasons The increasing ubiquity of broadband has made it viable, and the proven economics of the advertising model has made it profitable.

Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction.

We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.

About half of all design patterns out there [...] appear to be ways take perfectly natural design ideas and twist them to fit into someones static type system: recipes for pounding square pegs into round holes

There are pros and cons to taking money. The best kind of company is one where you don't have to take any moneyI funded the first few years myself. But eventually, I took some money from Mitch Kapor and then others. Not so much because I needed it at that point, but because I knew that, ultimately, you cannot accomplish something completely on your own. You really need to develop a network of people who win when you win.

We get things wrong before we get things right.

You can achieve a shallow local maximum with A/B testing - but you'll never win hearts and minds.

Those who can envision a plausible future that's brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead.

VisiCalc took 20 hours of work per week for some people and turned it out in 15 minutes and let them become much more creative.

I believe strongly that a group's potential is eventually limited by the strength of its leadership. I'm an outsider, but it still looks to me like the leadership in the Java w orld is Fouled Up Beyond ALL Recognition. Java ISVs don't know whether to listen to Mom or Dad. Everybody knows IBM should just buy Sun and clean up the mess. When are they going to do it?

Great programmers learn how to program their tools, not just use them.

If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.

One of the great skills in using any language is knowing what not to use, what not to say. There's that simplicity thing again.

Early Apple machines - don't know how to answer what it was like since there were so few tools. Just had to keep debugging by isolating a problem, looking at memory in the limited debugging (weaker than the DOS DEBUG and no symbols) patch and retry and then re-program, download and try again. And again.

A manager's most important work is helping the people doing the work. Give them a goal and let them work. Remove any impediments that get in their way. Do anything that make them more effective or productive. Then the organization can capitalize on the fruits of their work.

Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.

A hero is someone who, for the general good, takes the initiative to solve an ambiguous problem.

It is important to remember that when it comes to law, computers never make copies, only human beings make copies. Computers are given commands, not permission. Only people can be given permission.

Patents? Disappointed? Don't think of it that way. Software patents weren't feasible then so we chose not to risk $10,000.

Writing code? That's the easy part. Getting your application in the hands of users, and creating applications that people actually want to use - now that's the hard stuff.

Three bloody roles, Scrum has, and only three. If you can’t get that right, don’t call it Scrum, OK?

Mac people use their computers; Windows people put up with their computers

Werewolf is a simple game for a large group of people (seven or more.) It requires no equipment besides some bits of paper; you can play it just sitting in a circle. I’d call it a party game, except that it’s a game of accusations, lying, bluffing, second-guessing, assassination, and mob hysteria.

Chaos and Order combined equal Balance.

The wages of sin is debugging.

Java is like a variant of the game of Tetris in which none of the pieces can fill gaps created by the other pieces, so all you can do is pile them up endlessly.

We are still in the infancy of naming what is really happening on software development projects.

The whole HTML validation exercise is questionable, but validating as XHTML is flat-out masochism. Only recommended for those that enjoy pain. Or programmers. I can’t always tell the difference.

The rest of the world views the USA the way Silicon Valley views Microsoft. Except with tanks.

Bootstrapping is a way to do something about the problems you have without letting someone else give you permission to do them.

The fact is, when you look at the best teams—like the ones that existed at Toyota or 3M when Takeuchi or Nonaka wrote their paper, or the ones at Google or Salesforce.com or Amazon today—there isn’t this separation of roles.

My philosophy is that once you get people compelled enough to sit down and play the game, the whole way you make the game successful is by giving them enough unique ways to do things. First, let them deal with pulling levers and things like that for a while. Then after they've mastered that, you give them something else to do, like getting through doorways by blasting them down with a cannon Next, you give them a monster-finding quest, followed by logic problems to figure out. You pace it that way. Assorted activities and the diversity of activities are what makes a game rich in my mind.

We don't have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, but we don't.

Focusing on skills, communications, and community allows the project to be more effective and more agile than focusing on processes and plans.

School is temporary. Education is not. If you want to prosper in life: find something that fascinates you and jump all over it. Don't wait for someone to teach you; your enthusiasm will attract teachers to you. Don't worry about diplomas or degrees; just get so good that no one can ignore you.

I believe there's something in the Bible about 'Thou shalt not call anyone insane who owns and is competent with more firearms than you own sharp sticks.'

Greatness can’t be imposed; it has to come from within. But it does live within all of us.