Quotes on Computer Education

In response to my original article, “101 Great Computer Programming Quotes, ” José M. Aguilar doubled the fun with “, ” which was translated, edited and republished here by Timm Martin (and Google Translator) with permission from Mr. Aguilar.

Computing

1. “I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them.”
   — Isaac Asimov
   
2. “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”
   — Emo Philips
   
3. “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”
   — Edsger W. Dijkstra
   
4. “The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.”
   — Bill Gates
   
5. “Software is like entropy: It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases.”
   — Norman Augustine
   
6. “Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container.”
   — Nathan Myhrvold
   
7. “All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.”
   — IBM Manual, 1925
   
8. “Standards are always out of date. That’s what makes them standards.”
   — Alan Bennett
   
9. “Physics is the universe’s operating system.”
   — Steven R Garman
   
10. “It’s hardware that makes a machine fast. It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.”
    — Craig Bruce
    

Knowledge

11. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
    — Albert Einstein
    
12. “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
    — Stephen Hawking
    
13. “The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.”
    — Socrates
    
14. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”
    — Benjamin Franklin
    
15. “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
    — Confucius
    
16. “If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”
    — Ludwig Wittgenstein
    
17. “Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.”
    — Mitchell Kapor
    

Users

18. “If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.”
    — Linus Torvalds
    
19. “From a programmer’s point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request.”
    — P. Williams
    
20. “Where is the ‘any’ key?”
    — Homer Simpson, in response to the message, “Press any key”
    
21. “Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.”
    — Donald Knuth
    
22. “There is only one problem with common sense; it’s not very common.”
    — Milt Bryce
    
23. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
    — Bill Gates
    
24. “Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.”
    — Donald E. Knuth
    

Internet

25. “The Internet? We are not interested in it.”
    — Bill Gates, 1993
    
26. “The best way to get accurate information on Usenet is to post something wrong and wait for corrections.”
    — Matthew Austern
    

Professionals

27. “The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.”
    — Nathaniel Borenstein
    
28. “Pessimists, we’re told, look at a glass containing 50% air and 50% water and see it as half empty. Optimists, in contrast, see it as half full. Engineers, of course, understand the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”
    — Bob Lewis
    
29. “In a room full of top software designers, if two agree on the same thing, that’s a majority.”
    — Bill Curtis
    
30. “It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.”
    — Nathaniel S. Borenstein
    
31. “Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren’t doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they’re sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.”
    — Charles M. Strauss
    
32. “If you think you are worth what you know, you are very wrong. Your knowledge today does not have much value beyond a couple of years. Your value is what you can learn and how easily you can adapt to the changes this profession brings so often.”
    — Jose M. Aguilar
    

Programming

33. “Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”
    — Abelson and Sussman
    
34. “Commenting your code is like cleaning your bathroom — you never want to do it, but it really does create a more pleasant experience for you and your guests.”
    — Ryan Campbell
    
35. “We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.”
    — Jeff Atwood
    
36. “Low-level programming is good for the programmer’s soul.”
    — John Carmack
    
37. “It’s OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn’t need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.”
    — Steve McConnell
    
38. “If we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as ‘lines produced’ but as ‘lines spent.'”
    — Edsger Dijkstra
    
39. “Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined.”
    — Kreitzberg and Shneiderman
    
40. “Before software should be reusable, it should be usable.”
    — Ralph Johnson
    
41. “If you automate a mess, you get an automated mess.”
    — Rod Michael
    
42. “Looking at code you wrote more than two weeks ago is like looking at code you are seeing for the first time.”
    — Dan Hurvitz
    
43. “It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.”
    — Alan Perlis
    
44. “Less than 10% of the code has to do with the ostensible purpose of the system; the rest deals with input-output, data validation, data structure maintenance, and other housekeeping.”
    — Mary Shaw
    
45. “If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.”
    — Alan Perlis
    
46. “How rare it is that maintaining someone else’s code is akin to entering a beautifully designed building, which you admire as you walk around and plan how to add a wing or do some redecorating. More often, maintaining someone else’s code is like being thrown headlong into a big pile of slimy, smelly garbage.”
    — Bill Venners
    
47. “Code generation, like drinking alcohol, is good in moderation.”