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

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.

The pool is terrible, but that doesn't have much to do with my record swims. That's all mental attitude.

After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

Any time I need to get a serious attitude adjustment, I put on one of their records, and there are examples there for all time to keep us honest and keep us reaching; they'll never be eclipsed.

What sculptors do is represent the essence of gesture. What is important in mime is attitude.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

Modern Orthodoxy has a highly positive attitude toward the State of Israel. Our Ultra-Orthodox brethren recognize only the Holy Land, but not the state.

I need that aggressive attitude to play my music and more men have that attitude than women.

The war changed everybody's attitude. We became international almost overnight.

There does not seem to be that collegiality I referred to, there seems to be much more of a them versus us attitude, rather than we all have a role to play in this process so let's get on with it.

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

That's what I love from metal, and that's what I love from hip-hop. That's what I love from any music that's hard, that's got an edge to it-The attitude in it.

I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.

We have become aware of the responsibility for our attitude towards the dark pages in our history. We have understood that bad service is done to the nation by those who are impelling to renounce that past.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.