A Quote by Martin Fowler

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

Martin Fowler

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Any Code Computer Fool Good Humans Programmers Understand Write

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Martin Fowler
American - Engineer
Born: 1963

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

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

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Tom Van Vleck

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

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

Stephen Hawking

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

Larry Wall

The word 'code' turns out to be a really important word for my book, 'The Information.' The genetic code is just one example. We talk now about coders, coding. Computer guys are coders. The stuff they write is code.

James Gleick

Most programs are not write-once. They are reworked and rewritten again and again in their lived. Bugs must be debugged. Changing requirements and the need for increased functionality mean the program itself may be modified on an ongoing basis. During this process, human beings must be able to read and understand the original code. It is therefore more important by far for humans to be able to understand the program than it is for the computer.

Yukihiro Matsumoto

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code - with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It's very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

Elon Musk

Always think about how a piece of code should be used: good interfaces are the essence of good code. You can hide all kinds of clever and dirty code behind a good interface if you really need such code.

Bjarne Stroustrup

When the words are fuzzy, the programmers reflexively retreat to the most precise method of articulation available: source code. Although there is nothing more precise than code, there is also nothing more permanent or resistant to change. So the situation frequently crops up where nomenclature confusion drives programmers to begin coding prematurely, and that code becomes the de facto design, regardless of its appropriateness or correctness.

Amari Cooper

Getting C programmers to understand that they cause the computer to do less than minimum is intractable. … Ask him why he thinks he should be able to get away with unsafe code, core dumps, viruses, buffer overruns, undetected errors, etc., just because he wants speed.

Erik Naggum

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

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

Larry Wall

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

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.

Linus Torvalds

A Quote by Martin Fowler

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