If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

Computer Science is embarrassed by the computer.

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

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.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration".

Every program has two purposes: The one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.

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

One man's constant is another man's variable.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

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

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.

We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.

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

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

Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

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.

When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.

Symmetry is a complexity-reducing concept (co-routines include subroutines); seek it everywhere.

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.

I said, 'Okay, it's the year 2000, I'm getting a computer and a Palm Pilot.' I know how to check my e-mail, and I've listed some phone numbers on it. Half the time the battery has gone out so I can't use it.

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.

I've got a computer, but I won't go near it.

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.

All we can do when we think of kids today is think of more hours of school, earlier age at the computer, and curfews. Who would want to grow up in that world?

In OK Computer, the guitar was already moving towards a tone generator as well as a riff generator.

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.

Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

I always say that my favorite game was Original Adventure, published by both Microsoft and Apple Computer back in 1980.

To err is human - and to blame it on a computer is even more so.

I think computer science, by and large, is still stuck in the Modern age.

It would be nice to design a real briefcase - you open it up and it's your computer but it also stores your books.

I am the farthest thing from a computer genius.