Programming Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old programming quotes, programming sayings, and programming proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

In programming the hard part isn't solving problems, but deciding what problems to solve. Paul Graham
Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost. Bjarne Stroustrup
Writing code is not production, it's not always craftsmanship though it can be, it's design. Joel Spolsky
Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft. Richard Stallman
Programming is legitimate and necessary academic endeavour. Donald Knuth
Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out. Chris Pine
You should imagine variables as tentacles, rather than boxes. They do not contain values; they grasp them two variables can refer to the same value. Marijn Haverbeke
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. Alan Perlis
Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books. Alan Turing
It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free. Steve McConnell
Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do. Donald Knuth
Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick. Charles Petzold
Programming is the art of doing one thing at a time Michael C. Feathers
Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning. Nicholas Negroponte
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. C.A.R. Hoare
Programming is not easy like Sunday morning, it is silent poetry. Waseem Latif
It's harder to read code than to write it. Joel Spolsky
Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals. Henry Spencer
Programming is much much harder than doing mathematics. Doron Zeilberger
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. Bill Gates
In some ways, programming is like painting. You start with a blank canvas and certain basic raw materials. You use a combination of science, art, and craft to determine what to do with them. Andrew Hunt
Programming language is very specific to instructing a computer to do a particular structure of a sequence. It's the very way you tell the machine what you want it to do. Brian Kernighan
Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding. Burt Rutan
Code is like humor. When you have to explain it, it’s bad. Cory House
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. Dennis Ritchie
Everyday life is like programming, I guess. If you love something you can put beauty into it. Donald Knuth
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language. Donald Knuth
Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California. Edsger Dijkstra
Programming is the art of algorithm design and the craft of debugging errant code. Ellen Ullman
First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack. George Carrette