Coding Practices Quotes

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

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.

I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code.

I am not versed in production software. I have basic knowledge, but it ends there.

Historically speaking, the presence of wheels in Unix has never precluded their reinvention.

I have never seen an experienced programmer who routinely made detailed flow charts before beginning to write programs.

No matter what, the way to learn to program is to write code and rewrite it and see it used and rewrite again. Reading other people's code is invaluable as well.

Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy.

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.

There are more useful systems developed in languages deemed awful than in languages praised for being beautiful - many more.

That being said, I think we should immediately deprecate any string concatenation that combines '19' with '99'.