Computer and Education Quotes
Below is the complete list of quotes, sorted by author, that feeds the random quote in the sidebar. Current count: 231. Suggestions for others are welcome (john.lewis@acm.org). Rich Pattis has a nice collection of similar quotes, and there are also good sets here (software) and here (education) and here (education).
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
Good teaching is more a giving of the right questions than a giving of the right answers.
There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Today, most software exists, not to solve a problem, but to interface with other software.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science -- the one that heralds new discoveries -- is not Eureka! but That's funny...
I've learned that if you are not failing a lot, you are probably not being as creative as you could be.
Knowledge is power.
Software people would never drive to the office if building engineers and automotive engineers were as cavalier about buildings and autos as the software engineer is about his software.
A program is never less than 90% complete, and never more than 95% complete.
A single question can be more influential than a thousand statements.
The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases.
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
More than the act of testing, the act of designing tests is one of the best bug preventers known.
There is a division in the student population between those who go to college to learn and those who go to college to earn a diploma.
The less you know, the more you believe.
Simplicity and flexibility will trump optimization and power in a world where connectivity is the key.
All models are wrong. Some models are useful.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.
Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.
How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time.
Plan to throw one away; you will anyhow.
Successful software always gets changed.
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination.
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time to come.
Education is one of the few things a person is willing to pay for and not get.
A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
Easy reading is damned hard writing.
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.
The city's central computer told you? R2D2, you know better than to trust a strange computer.
The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
Please save me from people who have been told what to like, and then like it.
The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.
Every noble work is at first impossible.
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.
If you plan for one year, plant rice. If you plan for 10 years, plant a tree. If you plan for 100 years, educate a child.
In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter.
Judge not the horse by his saddle.
Many a false step is made by standing still.
Tell me and I forget; Show me and I remember; Involve me and I understand.
The first step toward wisdom is calling things by their right names.
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
If you don't think carefully, you might believe that programming is just typing statements in a programming language.
I kept my Gateway computer box because it was the perfect size to hold my Star Wars action figures.
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
Voluminous documentation is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
If you cannot describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you are doing.
A problem well stated is half-solved.
Computer Science is no more about computers than Astronomy is about telescopes.
If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as lines produced but as lines spent.
Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.
Simplifications have had a much greater long-range scientific impact than individual feats of ingenuity.
Testing can show the presence of bugs, but not their absence.
The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.
The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.
The tools we use have a profound (and devious) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
If the user can't use it, it doesn't work.
Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. As a result, genius is often a talented person who has done all of his homework.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Humans beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
I have no particular talent. I am only inquisitive.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
To arrive at the simple is difficult.
Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
Only the educated are free.
When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion.
Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.
There does not now, nor will there ever exist, a programming language in which it is the least bit hard to write bad programs.
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.
Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no one dares criticize it.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Good programmers know what's beautiful and bad one's don't.
One person's constant is another person's variable.
Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
The test of a language is not simply how clean the finished program looks in it, but how clean the path to the finished program was.
When one teaches, two learn.
If you can't write it down in English, you can't code it.
Anything a faculty member can learn, a student can easily.
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back.
Nothing endures but change.
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction.
Inside every well-written large program is a well-written small program.
The unavoidable cost of reliability is simplicity.
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.
A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.
The art of programming lies in that nether region between the hopeful wishes of an elegant architecture and the hard grindstone of technical details.
The fastest algorithm can frequently be replaced by one that is almost as fast and much easier to understand.
To teach is to learn twice.
Adding security to an existing, large insecure system will, in my judgement, prove an impossible task.
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
Leonardo da Vinci called music "the shaping of the invisible," and his phrase is even more apt as a description of software.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
It is the greatest achievement of a teacher to enable his students to surpass him.
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
Man is the most extraordinary computer of all.
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.
Programmers who subconsciously view themselves as artists will enjoy what they do and will do it better.
The two most powerful words in any language are what if.
Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing.
Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.
Don't make the user provide information that the system already knows.
Complexity is a sign of technical immaturity. Simplicity of use is the real sign of a well designed product.
Logic is the anatomy of thought.
Certainty is a weakness, I think.
Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable is quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.
You shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.
Don't make predictions about computing that can be checked in your lifetime.
The global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It's created by instant electronic information movement.
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time.
It's ridiculous to live 100 years and only be able to remember 30 million bytes. You know less than a compact disc.
The computer is no better than its program.
The person who knows how will always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.
Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
Anyone who puts a small gloss on a fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building on it, is a thief.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
The structure of a software system provides the ecology in which code is born, matures, and dies.
When teaching a rapidly changing technology, perspective is more important than content.
The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it.
To understand a program, you must become both the machine and the program.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy.
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.
If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it.
Computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.
Always to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius.
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.
Treat your password like your toothbrush: don't let anybody else use it and get a new one every six months.
More good code has been written in languages denounced as bad than in languages proclaimed wonderful -- much more.
There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.
To be reusable, software must first be usable.
It is better to not be on the Web than to be on and not know why.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
There is a difference between not knowing and not knowing yet.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
43% of all statistics are worthless.
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
A thunderstorm is nature's way of saying you spend too much time in front of the computer.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Computers have lots of memory but no imagination.
Computing is not a spectator sport.
Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever.
Don't anthropomorphize computers -- they hate it.
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.
Go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.
If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it with a computer.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.
Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.
One who walks in another's tracks leaves no footprints.
Programs for sale. Fast, Reliable, Cheap: choose two.
Question authority, but raise your hand first.
Recurses! Called again.
The best documentation is self-documenting code and an intuitive user interface.
The only stupid question is the one that's not asked.
There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Time is an excellent teacher, but it eventually kills all of its students.
To the user, the interface is the system.
Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning.
He who can lead you to believe an absurdity, can lead you to commit an atrocity.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft, and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.
Computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is.
If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
A computer will do what you tell it to do, but that may be much different from what you had in mind.
Furious activity is no substitue for understanding.
From the programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request.
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