The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.

— Frederick P. Brooks

#programmers

Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.

— Brian W. Kernighan

#bugs #debugging

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

— Bill Gates

We have persistant(sic) objects, they're called files.

— Ken Thompson

When in doubt, use brute force.

— Ken Thompson

#programming

Don't live with broken windows.

— Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas

#refactoring

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.

— Bill Gates

Don't waste your time typing up that long visionary tome; no one's going to read it. Take consolation in the fact that if you give your product enough room to grow itself, in the end it won't resemble anything you wrote about anyway.

— Gina Trapani

#complexity

Workaholics aren't heroes. They don't save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already because she figured out a faster way to get things done.

— 37Signals

#management

It is not that uncommon for the cost of an abstraction to outweigh the benefit it delivers. Kill one today!

— John Carmack