Top 184 Programmers Quotes & Sayings

Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers.

Real programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.

The world of programmers is not going to change on its own.

Programmers can be lazy.

GOTO, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers to complain about unstructured programmers.

I've always sort of been at odds with radio programmers.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Programmers have not been professionals because they haven't really cared about quality.

There are 2 to 3 million women programmers in the world. We need to see them more.

Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult.

It is a mistake to think that programmers wares are programs. Programmers have to produce trustworthy solutions and present it in the form of cogent arguments. Programs source code is just the accompanying material to which these arguments are to be applied to.

The central problem of C and C++ is that they require programmers to do their own memory management

As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.

I found out that most programmers don't like to test their software as intensely as I do.

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.

LISP programmers know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.

Chefs work with food, artists with oil paint, programmers with code.

Note to self: Pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours.

With the revolution around 1980 of PCs, the spreadsheet programs were tuned for office workers - not to replace office workers, but it respected office workers as being capable of being programmers. So office workers became programmers of spreadsheets. It increased their capabilities.

My duty as a teacher is to train, educate future programmers.

The best programmers and internet entrepreneurs are in the Bay Area. Don't kid yourself about that, not even for a second.

We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp.

Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night.

When are programmers happy? They're happy when they're not underutilized - when they're not bored - and also when they're not overburdened with inappropriate specifications or meaningless bureaucracies. In other words, programmers are happiest when they're working efficiently. This is a general preference in creative work.

Programmers are very creative people. And animators are problem solvers, just as programmers are.

There are no standards for computer programmers and no group to certify them.

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.

With software products, it is usual to find that the software has major `bugs' and does not work reliably for some users... The lay public, familiar with only a few incidents of software failure, may regard them as exceptions caused by exceptionally inept programmers. Those of us who are software professionals know better; the most competent programmers in the world cannot avoid such problems.

Programmers seem to be changing the world. It would be a relief, for them and for all of us, if they knew something about it.

When building a complex system, having crackerjack programmers (who can make any design work, even a bad one) can be a liability. The result, after lots of effort, is a working system that cannot be easily maintained or upgraded. Good -but not great- programmers would fail early, causing a realization that the system must be redesigned, and then reimplemented. The extra cost is paid once, early in the system's cycle (when it is cheap), instead of repeatedly paid late in the system's cycle (when it is more expensive).

Laziness is a programmers main virtue.

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.

Programmers are expensive. Hardware is cheap.

I've known people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer.

C programmers never die. They are just cast into void.

Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.

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

Most kids are not dreaming of being programmers, scientists or engineers.

Whether you're looking at manufacturing and the use of robotics or the knowledge industries, they need computer programmers.

You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's logic-based creativity.

People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true.

Beyond basic mathematical aptitude, the difference between good programmers and great programmers is verbal ability.

An organisation that treats its programmers as morons will soon have programmers that are willing and able to act like morons only.

Advertising revenue available for all programmers, all broadcasters is not enough to create quality programming, and subscription revenues are very, very minimal which come to all programmers.

Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad ones don't.

The standard library saves programmers from having to reinvent the wheel.

Most of the programmers in ten years will be us, and we won't get much smarter.

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists.

The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

Programmers are as emotional and irrational as normal people

The programmers of tomorrow are the wizards of the future.

Once we were Programmers. Maybe our last best hope is a movie.

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.

Jolt is for Windows programmers. It's typical IBM PC: it goes in brown and comes out yellow. Mountain Dew is for Macintosh programmers: it goes in yellow and comes out yellow. It's WYSIWYP.

Any verbose and tedious solution is error-prone because programmers get bored.

In the beginning, there were Real Programmers.

Reality is the temporary resultant of continuous struggles between rival gangs of programmers.