It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- Edsger Dijkstra

State is the root of all evil. In particular functions with side effects should be avoided. -- OO Sucks (bluetail.com)

To do something well you have to love it. So to the extent you can preserve hacking as something you love, you're likely to do it well. Try to keep the sense of wonder you had about programming at age 14. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably is. -- Paul Graham.

We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking

Understanding why C++ is the way it is helps a programmer use it well. A deep understanding of a tool is essential for an expert craftsman. -- Bjarne Stroustrap

It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people. -- Randy S. Nelson (dean of Pixar University)

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. ~Thomas Jefferson

Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale