Alan Turing Quotes

The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.

I think everyone should get a little exposure to computer science because it really forces you to think in a slightly different way, and it's a skill that you can apply in life in general, whether you end up in computer science or not.

The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity.

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.

Maths is fundamentally a different process in education than it is in the real world. There is an insistence that we do maths by hand when most of it is done by computers. The idea that you have to do everything by hand before you can operate a computer is nonsense.

What is mathematics? It is only a systematic effort of solving puzzles posed by nature.

Even if you're going into a field that has nothing to do with computer science, just having that way of analytical thinking and being able to process information and break it down is important no matter what you're doing. Having that knowledge of code is something that you can apply to your daily life.

Mathematicians always like a deceptively difficult problem.

Mathematicians have a certain type of mind, and climbers have a certain type of mind, because climbing poses these incredibly interesting problems for them.

With computers we can work everything out from the beginning.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Building Oracle is like doing math puzzles as a kid.

I think that computer programming shows in my writing. Often when I write about computer programmers I'll write about the way that they see the world and they structure the world.

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

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

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.

Now, the reason that we think computer science is about computers is pretty much the same reason that the Egyptians thought geometry was about surveying instruments. And that is, when some field is just getting started and you don't really understand it very well, it's very easy to confuse the essence of what you're doing with the tools that you use.

A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.

Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn

Every good mathematician should also be a good chess player and vice versa.

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.

When somebody has learned how to program a computer ... You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.

What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline. My answer to these questions is simple -it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program.

To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge.