Edsger Dijkstra

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.

Abstraction is the tool we use to escape from the complexity of the real world.

In the long run, every program becomes random behavior.

The primary duty of an exception handler is to get the error out of the lap of the programmer and into the surprised face of the user.

How do we convince people who do not know much about computers to stick to an error-free programming process? It is a naïve hope to expect that people who are smart enough to write programs are also smart enough to understand the need for discipline.

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

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the better a mathematician one is, the more likely one is to have been a programmer.

The practice of programming consists of subdividing a computer problem into smaller problems and then solving each of the smaller ones.

I think of the company of unknown programmers as a new form of theatre.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

A courageous man is one who can face death without fear; a programmer is one who can face a bug without panic.

The joy of life is in the variety of our experiences.

In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.

Object-oriented designs on the whole, even if you don't do bad object-oriented design, have a tendency to be very much like an old dormitory: everything chokes to the ground floor.

The ability of a program to correct errors is limited by the programmer's ability to make it simple and clear.

For a long time it was assumed that the axiological opposition between technology and nature was a given, but actually it is not.

The difference between theory and practice is small in theory but large in practice.