APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them. (Roy Keir)

Do not allow [Ada] in its present state to be used in applications where reliability is critical i.e. nuclear power stations, cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense systems. (C A R Hoare)

He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does as an adult has no brain. (John Moore)

When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under it while the first legion marched across. If programmers today worked under similar ground rules, they might well find themselves getting much more interested in Ada. (Robert Dewar)

Historically, languages designed for other people to use have been bad: Cobol, PL/I, Pascal, Ada, C++. The good languages have been those that were designed for their own creators: C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp. (Paul Graham)

And despite the occasional predictions that assembly language will be outlawed by the US government sometime this decade, it is likely that someone who is absolutely determined to sink to the lowest level of programming languages will be able to find an employer who will indulge his base instincts. (Ed Yourdon in 1991)

PL/I and Ada started out with all the bloat, were very daunting languages, and got bad reputations (deservedly). C++ has shown that if you slowly bloat up a language over a period of years, people don't seem to mind as much. (James Hague)

BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing. (Seymour Papert)

Other advanced languages, such as assembler and C, were not terribly complex in themselves, but the environments in which applications were developed were downright weird, with mines scattered about everywhere, ready to blow the inattentive programmer out of the water. (Bruce Tognazzini)

If you can't do it in Fortran, do it in assembly language. If you can't do it in assembly language, it isn't worth doing. (Ed Post)

I remember being impressed with Ada because you could write an infinite loop without a faked up condition. The idea being that in Ada the typical infinite loop would normally be terminated by detonation. (Larry Wall)

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. (Edsger Dijkstra)

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums. (Edsger Dijkstra)

C treats you like a consenting adult. Pascal treats you like a naughty child. Ada treats you like a criminal. (Bruce Powel Douglass)

Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. (Alan J Perlis)

APL is like a diamond. It has a beautiful crystal structure; all of its parts are related in a uniform and elegant way. But if you try to extend this structure in any way - even by adding another diamond - you get an ugly kludge. LISP, on the other hand, is like a ball of mud. You can add any amount of mud to it and it still looks like a ball of mud. (Joel Moses)

Beyond 100,000 lines of code you should probably be coding in Ada. (P J Plauger)

It has been shown in laboratory studies that the average chimpanzee can, with Visual Basic, create a new program which exploits some security hole in Microsoft Outlook within 10-15 minutes of random clicking on pictures. Your results may vary, depending on whether you have learned to use your opposable thumbs. (Visual Basic)

If you're masochistic enough to program in ADA, we're not going to stop you. (Matt Welsh)

[Visual Basic] is a poor imitation of an object system for a poor imitation of a programming language that poor imitations of programmers use to write poor imitations of programs for poor imitations of employers who pay poor imitations of programmers' salaries. (Jim H Jacobs)

If you want a language that tries to lock up all the sharp objects and fire-making implements, use Pascal or Ada: the Nerf languages, harmless fun for children of all ages, and they won't mar the furniture. (Scott Fahlman)

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Assembler programmer's song

Every bit is sacred, Every bit is right.
If a bit is wasted, I can't sleep at night.
Every bit is gorgeous, Every bit is free.
Admire the shape it forges, In hex and BCD!

("Verity Stob")

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. (Larry Wall)