CodeQuotes » Programming

M. Feathers Art of programming

Neal Enssle — Tue, 11 May 2010 12:00:28 +0000

“The Art of Programming is doing one !@%^$ thing at a time.”

— Michael Feathers, Twitter, 5/11/2010

Rands on how to do it

Neal Enssle — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:21:57 +0000

“Be productive, be fantastically clever when necessary, speak truth to power, hit your dates, and don’t ship crap.”

— Rands in Repose, @rands

Andrew Glover on refactoring

Neal Enssle — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:00:37 +0000

“Refactoring is the act of improving code that has already been improved.”

— Andrew Glover, In pursuit of code quality

Kent Beck on TDD and fear

Neal Enssle — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:24:09 +0000

“Test-driven development is a way of managing fear during programming.”

— Kent Beck, Test-Driven Development by Example

Gandalf on wisdom

Neal Enssle — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:01:09 +0000

“He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.”

— Gandalf the Grey, J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring”

Fred Brooks on specifications

Neal Enssle — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:11:48 +0000

“Even perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification…. Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.”

— Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet

Martin Fowler on understandability

Neal Enssle — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:32:11 +0000

“Understandability is next to godliness.”

— Martin Fowler, Refactoring

Jeff Atwood on painting as a metaphor

Neal Enssle — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:50:46 +0000

“For years, software development was an entire subdivision of badly painted houses.”

— Jeff Atwood, codinghorror.com

Martin Fowler on naming

Neal Enssle — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:07:57 +0000

“Remember that your code is for a human first and a computer second. Humans need good names. Take note of when you have spent ages trying to do something that would have been easier if a couple of methods had been better named. Good naming is a skill that requires practice; improving this skill is the key to being a truly skillful programmer.”

— Martin Fowler, Refactoring

Fowler on ugly code

Neal Enssle — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:19:52 +0000

“Even so the program works. Is this not just an aesthetic judgment, a dislike of ugly code? It is until we want to change the system. The compiler doesn’t care whether the code is ugly or clean. But when we change the system, there is a human involved, and humans do care. A poorly designed system is hard to change. Hard because it is hard to figure out where the changes are needed. If it is hard to figure out what to change, there is a strong chance that the programmer will make a mistake and introduce bugs.”

— Martin Fowler, Refactoring