Dave Parnas Quotes

Owning a computer without programming is like having a kitchen and using only the microwave oven

I'm really good at making software for publishing.

And, I think that is actually appropriate because I'm really not the world's best programmer, I think it's a good thing that I'm not touching the code.

When someone builds a bridge, he uses engineers who have been certified as knowing what they are doing. Yet when someone builds you a software program, he has no similar certification, even though your safety may be just as dependent upon that software working as it is upon the bridge supporting your weight.

It always helps to be a good programmer. It is important to like computers and to be able to think of things people would want to do with their computers.

Everyone on the founding team ought to invest the time in a coding bootcamp.

My dad grew up as a computer programmer, so he always had random computer software, and I started opening up editing software at age 12 and figuring out how to build websites.

Teaching someone to program is like giving them a superpower.

In the information age, the barriers [to entry into programming] just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say Yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that. I'll just restart Apache every 10 requests.

C++ is designed to allow you to express ideas, but if you don't have ideas or don't have any clue about how to express them, C++ doesn't offer much help.

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.

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

The most important people is to pick people who like to write software and who are good at... good developers like working with each other. And they... they reinforce each other's skills.

I've known people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer.

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.

Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)

I'm still a really shitty programmer, but I know enough to hack a prototype together.

It would've been amazing [to work as programmer]. You're good at numbers, you're good with people, you like to wear shorts in the summertime.

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.

If you think you're a really good programmer... read Knuth's Art of Computer Programming... You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.

Once you understand how to write a program get someone else to write it.

My number one piece of advice is: you should learn how to program.

The situation is so much better for programmers today - a cheap used PC, a linux CD, and an internet account, and you have all the tools necessary to work your way to any level of programming skill you want to shoot for.

Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.