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1 " America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want. "
― Robin Sloan , Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
2 " While we may continue to use the wordssmart and stupid, and while IQ tests may persist for certain purposes, the monopolyof those who believe in a single general intelligence has come to an end. Brain scientists and geneticists are documentingthe incredible differentiation of human capacities, computer programmers are creating systems that are intelligent in different ways, and educators are freshly acknowledging that their students have distinctive strengths and weaknesses. "
― Howard Gardner , Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century
3 " She had a theory that the fear of getting in trouble was what made her not as good a programmer and that, in fact, it was all linked to testosterone, and that was why there were more guy programmers than women. It was a very hazy theory, and she didn't like it, but she had pretty much convinced herself it was true, although she couldn't bear to think of sharing it with anybody, because it was a lot better to think that there were social reasons why girls didn't usually become code monkeys than to think there were biological reasons. "
― Maureen F. McHugh
4 " Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade," she says, smiling. Comfortable territory. " Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue." Oh, I am very familiar with the internal monologue." But I think the writers had their turn," she says, " and now it's programmers who get to upgrade the human operating system." I am definitely talking to a girl from Google. " So what's the next upgrade?" " It's already happening," she says. " There are all these things you can do, and it's like you're in more than one place at one time, and it's totally normal. I mean, look around." I swivel my head, and I see what she wants me to see: dozens of people sitting at tiny tables, all learning into phones showing them places that don't exist and yet are somehow more interesting... "
5 " A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. "
― Bill Bryson , I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away
6 " The buzz about Google these days is that it's like America itself: still the biggest game in town, but inevitably and irrevocably on the decline. Both are superpowers with unmatched resources, but both are faced with fast-growing rivals, and both will eventually be eclipsed. For America, that rival is China. For Google, it's Facebook. (This is all from tech-gossip blogs, so take it with a grain of salt. They also say a startup called MonkeyMoney is going to be huge next year.) But here's the difference: staring down the inevitable, America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever they want. "
7 " There were other strange signals and signs. Another day, suddenly felt an almost overwhelming urge to travel to Balitmore. I wanted to 'kidnap' a helicoper fly it there if I didn't drive the there', she explains. 'I had no idea where I was to go, only that I was certain I would know my destination as I encountered signs and certain landmarks along the way. I was not even certain who I was to meet, or what my mission was, but I felt I must go.' Beginning to heal by this time with Talbon's help, she resisted that urge. Yet she sensed she would be summoned for three more Cat Woman missions: two in 1999 and one in 2000.As for the code words for activating her, those had been erased from Cheryl's conscious memory. Buried deep in her unconscious mind, however, the words, when called up, cause her to react as her programmers want her to. Though she can't remember the activation codes, Cheryl knows her handlers said the same things every time. 'I'm working on unblocking the words in therapy. Once I know what the words are, I can learn how to stop their effect on me. I did it already when I learned the control code. Standing in front of a mirror, I said the control code words over and over until I was completely desensitised to them. That's what I have to do for the activation code words... but I have not been able to recall all of them as yet.' Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. 'It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told - even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that - they were not disjointed. They were not repetitive in terms of " I've heard this before" . It was not just trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. She'd really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with it again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. "
8 " All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works. "
― Seth Godin , Poke the Box
9 " Many programmers would prefer to mock in their client library specs, but doing so could result in the service and client passing all specs with hidden failures. "
10 " Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down…and writes.Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange.Some, downright weird.But then again, you’d have to be.To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors. "
― Christopher Hopper
11 " 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 W. Dijkstra
12 " In my view, the fact that computers caught up to humans and completely dominate humans in chess and some other domains already, that says there's evidence that, yes, in principle, they can be better programmers than humans. "
13 " People talk about computer programmers as if computers are our whole lives. That's simply not true. "
14 " The distance between the people who made the games and the people playing them wasn't that big. It was the spirit of independence. The programmers were a lot like you. "
15 " Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program. "
― Linus Torvalds
16 " It is a shame that homebrew development can't be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work, to be contrasted with the high level web and application work that so many entry level people start with. "
17 " When designers replaced the command line interface with the graphical user interface, billions of people who are not programmers could make use of computer technology. "
18 " Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. "