Programmers Quotes

If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. — Robert Sewell

I fear the the new object-oriented systems may suffer the fate of LISP, in that they can do many things, but the complexity of the class hierarchies may cause them to collapse under their own weight. — Bill Joy

Using Java for serious jobs is like trying to take the skin off a rice pudding wearing boxing gloves. — Tel Hudson

Anybody who thinks a little 9,000-line program [Java] that’s distributed free and can be cloned by anyone is going to affect anything we do at Microsoft has his head screwed on wrong. — Bill Gates

Take a cup of coffee and add three drops of poison and what have you got? Microsoft J++. — Scott McNealy

Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don’t work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero. — Paul Graham

Using PL/I must be like flying a plane with 7,000 buttons, switches, and handles to manipulate in the cockpit. — Edsger Dijkstra

Thirty years from now nobody will remember Java and everyone will remember Microsoft. — Charles Simonyi

If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, Perl will give you ten bullets and a laser scope, then stand by and cheer you on. — Teodor Zlatanov

Java is the most distressing thing to happen to computing since MS-DOS. — Alan Kay

Your development cycle is much faster because Java is interpreted. The compile-link-load-test-crash-debug cycle is obsolete. — James Gosling

Actually, I’m trying to make Ruby natural, not simple. — Yukihiro Matsumoto

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

When FORTRAN has been called an infantile disorder, PL/I, with its growth characteristics of a dangerous tumor, could turn out to be a fatal disease. — Edsger Dijkstra

The three characteristics of Perl programmers: mundaneness, sloppiness, and fatuousness. — Xah Lee

PL/I, “the fatal disease”, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. — 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

Java is, in many ways, C++–. — Michael Feldman

Perl has grown from being a very good scripting language into something like a cross between a universal solvent and an open-ended Mandarin where new ideograms are invented hourly. — Jeffrey Davis

LISP 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

Perl is like vise grips. You can do anything with it but it is the wrong tool for every job. — Bruce Eckel

I view the JVM as just another architecture that Perl ought to be ported to. — Larry Wall

I have found that humans often use Smalltalk during awkward moments. — Data

Perl:
The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. — Keith Bostic

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

C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce. — Scott McKay

A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. — Alan Perlis

Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like saying that K2 is shorter than Everest. — Larry O'Brien

In the best possible scenario Java will end up mostly like Eiffel but with extra warts because of insufficiently thoughtful early design. — Matthew B Kenne

Java, the best argument for Smalltalk since C++. — Frank Winkler

[Perl] is the sanctuary of dunces. The godsend for brainless coders. The means and banner of sysadmins. The lingua franca of trial-and-error hackers. The song and dance of stultified engineers. — Xah Lee

Java is the SUV of programming tools. — Philip Greenspun

Going from programming in Pascal to programming in C, is like learning to write in Morse code. — J P Candusso

Arguing that Java is better than C++ is like arguing that grasshoppers taste better than tree bark. — Thant Tessman

I think conventional languages are for the birds. They’re just extensions of the von Neumann computer, and they keep our noses in the dirt of dealing with individual words and computing addresses, and doing all kinds of silly things like that, things that we’ve picked up from programming for computers; we’ve built them into programming languages; we’ve built them into Fortran; we’ve built them in PL/1; we’ve built them into almost every language. — John Backus

C++: Simula in wolf’s clothing. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Java: the elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed of Smalltalk. — Jan Steinman

Perl is a car with an autopilot designed by insane aliens. — Jeff Smith

Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java’s designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them. — Paul Graham

High thoughts must have a high language. — Aristophanes

There are undoubtedly a lot of very intelligent people writing Java, better programmers than I will ever be. I just wish I knew why. — Steve Holden

The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous was the company. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried. — Paul Graham

If you learn to program in Java, you’ll never be without a job! — Patricia Seybold

Anyone could learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already knew Fortran, it would take three days. — Marvin Minsky

Knowing the syntax of Java does not make someone a software engineer. — John Knight

Javascript is the duct tape of the Internet. — Charlie Campbell

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. — Kong Fu Zi aka Confucius

Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. — Bill Gates

We Russians don’t drink any more. We now work on computers. We use computers to send viruses to the West and then we poach your money. We have the best hackers in the world. — Vladimir Zhirinovsky

The three characteristics of Perl programmers: mundaneness, sloppiness, and fatuousness. — Xah Lee

Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of two to four the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything technical. — Charles P Issawi

When trouble is solved before it forms, who calls that clever? — Sun Tzu

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. — Albert Einstein

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. — Mohandas Gandhi

Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contradictory thinking is eliminated. — Lao-Tzu

Despite their reputation for thick-headedness or stubbornness, it is important for technicians to see themselves as superior people who can easily adapt to change. — Taiichi Ohno

In almost every programming office I’ve visited in India during the past 15 years, I’ve been surprised by the number of people standing around, and watching a smaller number of people doing the actual work. By contrast, most of the US programming offices that I’ve visited since the early 1990s look like they’ve been hit by a neutron bomb – lots of empty cubicles, very few people, and every one of the workers (and managers) madly scurrying around, like crazed rats in a maze, trying to accomplish the jobs of two or three people. — Edward Yourdon

[Perl] is the sanctuary of dunces. The godsend for brainless coders. The means and banner of sysadmins. The lingua franca of trial-and-error hackers. The song and dance of stultified engineers. — Xah Lee

C++ in Cantonese is pronounced “C ga ga”. Need I say more? — Mark Glewwe

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. — Dandemis aka Lao Kiun

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it. — Mohandas Gandhi

In his errors a man is cto type. Observe the errors and you will know the man. — Kong Fu Zi aka Confucius

Our outrage at China notwithstanding, we should remember that before 1891 the copyrights of foreigners were not protected in the United States. — Lawrence Lessig

Following the political upheavals in 1989, when the U.S. and some other Western countries imposed sanctions against China, for a time IBM withdrew all its experts from this country and discontinued services for its mainframe products installed in the Chinese banking industry. Therefore, China can by no means pin its hopes on IBM’s abidance to business ethics, nor can it expect that the U.S. will refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs. — Zhong Hai

I have to wonder why people think that when they can’t manage local personnel within easy strangling and shooting distance, then they can manage personnel thousands of miles away that have different languages, cultures, and business rules. — Joe Celko