Technology & Innovation: Coding & Programming Quotes

Discover a curated collection of coding and programming quotes that highlight craftsmanship, curiosity, and the joy of building. From timeless principles to modern insights, these lines offer concise reminders about problem-solving, clarity, and continuous learning. Whether you are writing your first script or refining production systems, find motivation to iterate, debug, and ship with intent. Use these quotes to spark discussions with your team, guide code reviews, or simply reset your mindset before the next commit.

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"Now, it's my belief that Python is a lot easier than to teach to students programming and teach them C or C++ or Java at the same time because all the details of the languages are so much harder. Other scripting languages really don't work very well there either"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"'Programming' is a four-letter word"

Craig Bruce, Writer

Craig Bruce

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

Ken Thompson

"Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"When in doubt, use brute force"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

Ken Thompson

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it"

Donald Knuth, Scientist

Donald Knuth

"If you're talking about Java in particular, Python is about the best fit you can get amongst all the other languages. Yet the funny thing is, from a language point of view, JavaScript has a lot in common with Python, but it is sort of a restricted subset"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works"

Alan Perlis, Scientist

Alan Perlis

"Mark Hammond is working in this area, with Windows Scripting Host. It is definitely an area where Python fits almost perfectly. That's quite independent from Java, actually"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"I would guess that the decision to create a small special purpose language or use an existing general purpose language is one of the toughest decisions that anyone facing the need for a new language must make"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"I have this hope that there is a better way. Higher-level tools that actually let you see the structure of the software more clearly will be of tremendous value"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"My own perception of that is somewhat colored by where people ask my advice, which is still, of course, about changes to Python internals or at least standard libraries"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"There was a project at Lawrence Livermore National Labs where many years ago they went down this path for scripting and controlling very large numerical calculations"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"The second stream of material that is going to come out of this project is a programming environment and a set of programming tools where we really want to focus again on the needs of the newbie. This environment is going to have to be extremely user-friendly"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"If you decide to design your own language, there are thousands of sort of amateur language designer pitfalls"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"Yes, I definitely believe that it has some good cross-platform properties. Object orientation was one of the techniques I used to make Python platform independent"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"I wanted to separate data from programs, because data and instructions are very different"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

Ken Thompson

"I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in"

Marc Wallice, Actor

Marc Wallice

"In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever"

Niklaus Wirth, Scientist

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums"

Edsger Dijkstra, Scientist

Edsger Dijkstra

"Python is an experiment in how much freedom programmers need. Too much freedom and nobody can read another's code; too little and expressiveness is endangered"

Guido van Rossum, Scientist

Guido van Rossum

"Our ultimate goal is extensible programming (EP). By this, we mean the construction of hierarchies of modules, each module adding new functionality to the system"

Niklaus Wirth, Scientist

"The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris"

Larry Wall, Author

"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity"

Dennis Ritchie, Scientist

"Any program is only as good as it is useful"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Linus Torvalds

"I used to be interested in Windows NT, but the more I see it, the more it looks like traditional Windows with a stabler kernel. I don't find anything technically interesting there"

Linus Torvalds, Businessman

Linus Torvalds

"I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other"

Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor

Tim Berners-Lee

"If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there"

Ken Thompson, Scientist

Ken Thompson

"The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman"

Alan Perlis, Scientist

Alan Perlis

"In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages"

Alan Perlis, Scientist

Alan Perlis

"If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some"

Alan Perlis, Scientist

Alan Perlis

"Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul"

John Carmack, Scientist

John Carmack

"Clearly, programming courses should teach methods of design and construction, and the selected examples should be such that a gradual development can be nicely demonstrated"

Niklaus Wirth, Scientist

"Real programmers can write assembly code in any language"

Larry Wall, Author

"If you give a hacker a new toy, the first thing he'll do is take it apart to figure out how it works"

Jamie Zawinski, Scientist

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