Niklaus Wirth Quotes

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

The critical thing in developing software is not the program, it's the design. It is translating understanding of user needs into something that can be realized as a computer program.

There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.

In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy.

You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. It's logic-based creativity.

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.

I kind of 'code-sketch,' where I get started with a project by actually writing the code for it and getting something up on the screen. Then I play around with it and see if it's any fun and change the parts that aren't.

I was a programmer.

I don't like programming. It's tedious.

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

Programming today is the opposite of diamond mining. In diamond mining you dig up a lot of dirt to find a small bit of value. With programming you start with the value, the real intention, and bury it in a bunch of dirt.

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

There are people who actually like programming. I dont understand why they like programming.

It was used for decades to describe talented computer enthusiasts, people whose skill at using computers to solve technical problems and puzzles was - and is - respected and admired by others possessing similar technical skills.

If you know how to make software, then you can create big things.

I've been programming computers since elementary school, where they taught us, and I stuck with computer science through high school and college.

Many days I don't write any code at all, and some days I spend all day writing code.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

In my daily work, I work on very large, complex, distributed systems built out of many Python modules and packages. The focus is very similar to what you find, for example, in Java and, in general, in systems programming languages.

After graduating in 1973 I went into the programming field.

It's incredibly hard to program a network from scratch for 24 hours.

Computer programming is pretty much guaranteed income. I'm good at it, and I like it.

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

Programming is usually taught by examples.

Code writers, they are my idols.