The Question Of Whether Computers Can Think

Besides A Mathematical Inclination, An Exceptionally Good Mastery Of One's Native Tongue Is The Most Vital Asset Of A Competent Programmer.

Brainpower Is By Far Our Scarcest Resource.

In This Respect A Program Is Like A Poem: You Cannot Write A Poem Without Writing It. Yet People Talk About Programming As If It Were A Production Process And Measure "programmer Productivity" In Terms Of "number Of Lines Of Code Produced". In So Doing They Book That Number On The Wrong Side Of The Ledger: We Should Always Refer To "the Number Of Lines Of Code Spent".

It Is Not The Task Of The University To Offer What Society Asks For, But To Give What Society Needs.

The Competent Programmer Is Fully Aware Of The Strictly Limited Size Of His Own Skull; Therefore He Approaches The Programming Task In Full Humility, And Among Other Things He Avoids Clever Tricks Like The Plague.