Niklaus Wirth

“The programmer's task is not to write programs but to design them.”

“In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.”

“Data structures and algorithms are the core of computer science.”

“A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.”

“Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling--the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.”

“Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.”

“A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.”

“Simplicity is the key to reliability.”

“Whereas Europeans generally prefer elegance and conceptual clarity, Americans often opt for brute force.”

“Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware is getting faster.”

“A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.”

“The belief that complex systems require complex languages is a fallacy.”