“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”— Hal Abelson
“SICP is not about a programming language. It is about the process of computation and how to think about it.”— Hal Abelson
“What I want is a language in which I can write programs that I have a chance of getting right.”— James J. Horning
“Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious.”— Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
“For me, the most fun part of programming is the pleasing aesthetic of well-written code.”— Bill Budge
“The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.”— Edsger W. Dijkstra
“There's a certain joy in hacking - not breaking into computers - but in making a computer do something it was never intended to do.”— Eric Allman
“C++ is a general purpose programming language with a bias towards systems programming that is a better C.”— Bjarne Stroustrup
“A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.”— Steve McConnell
“A programming language is a tool that has a profound influence on our thinking habits.”— Guido van Rossum
“Conventional programming languages are growing ever more enormous, but not stronger. Inherent defects at the most basic level cause them to be both fat and weak.”— John Backus
“Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn't take it away from you. I'm happy to share what I can, because I'm in it for the long haul.”— John Carmack