Dangerous

"The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We’ve always done it this way.'"

Grace Hopper

 

Faster

"Good design adds value faster than it adds cost."

Thomas C. Gale

 

Components

"The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren’t there."

Gordon Bell

 

Temporary

"There is nothing more permanent than a temporary hack."

Kyle Simpson

 

Reliability

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability."

Edsger W. Dijkstra

 

Who Lies?

"Code never lies, comments sometimes do."

Ron Jeffries

 

Lasagna Code

"In the one and only true way. The object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'. (Too many layers)"

Roberto Waltman

 

Debugging

"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements."

Brian W. Kernighan

 

Performance

"The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases."

Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy

 

Perfection

"Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

Testing

"Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding."

Burt Rutan

 

Illusion

"The task of the software development team is to engineer the illusion of simplicity."

Grady Booch

 

Predict the Future

"The best way to predict the future is to implement it."

David Heinemeier Hansson

 

What You Know

"Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out."

Chris Pine

 

Read/Write

"It's harder to read code than to write it."

Joel Spolsky

 

Add or Remove

"When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective code."

Richard Pattis

 

Reusable

"Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable."

Ralph Johnson

 

Requirements

"Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file."

Louis Srygley

 

One Bit

"The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit."

Anonymous

 

Going Fast

"The only way to go fast, is to go well."

Robert C. Martin, "Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship"