A Quote by Joel Spolsky

It's harder to read code than to write it.

Joel Spolsky

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Code Harder Read Than Write

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Joel Spolsky
Engineer
Born: 1965

There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.

Joel Spolsky

When you learn to read and write, it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things. When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it's the same thing with coding. If you learn to code, you can code to learn. Now some of the things you can learn are sort of obvious. You learn more about how computers work.

Mitchel Resnick

Perhaps we could write code to optimize code, then run that code through the code optimizer?

Stephen Hawking

The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you're headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age, and it becomes harder and harder to get a job.

Vivek Wadhwa

Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore. But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it.

Mike Ferguson

I think it's harder - much harder - to be a good parent than to write a book.

Elizabeth Berg

Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

Eric S. Raymond

The most important thing is you can't write what you wouldn't read for pleasure. It's a mistake to analyze the market thinking you can write whatever is hot. You can't say you're going to write romance when you don't even like it. You need to write what you would read if you expect anybody else to read it.

Nora Roberts

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

Martin Fowler

The more I think about our species the more I think we just do stuff and make up explanations later when asked. But it's not true that I would rather write than read. I would rather read than write. To be honest I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.

Douglas Adams

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.

Bill Gates

The genetic code is not a binary code as in computers, nor an eight-level code as in some telephone systems, but a quaternary code with four symbols. The machine code of the genes is uncannily computerlike.

Richard Dawkins

Poetry and code - and mathematics - make us read differently from other forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations.

Stephanie Strickland

The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you - and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy.

Jonathan Zittrain

There are a couple of people in the world who can really program in C or FØRTRAN. They write more code in less time than it takes for other programmers. Most programmers aren't that good. The problem is that those few programmers who crank out code aren't interested in maintaining it.

Bill Joy

The current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading Finnegans Wake in a wind tunnel.

Dennis Miller

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