

Quotes about programming languages - scriptproof
http://www.scriptol.com/programming/quotes.php

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henrikeh
It bothers me that the "quotes" are all whimsical, ha-ha jokes about some
topic. They are punchlines, some even Low-Effort Content (Java is bad, Perl is
unreadable.)

The quote from Tony Hoare about the null reference was an honest and
interesting comment on the problems a language designer deals with - it might
even offer some guidance.

In sharp contrast, Richard A. O'Keefe's comment on C++: "Fifty years of
programming language research, and we end up with C++ ?"

~~~
masklinn
Less punchliney quotes, if that's the kind you prefer:

"Lisp is a programmable programming language." - John Foderaro, CACM,
September 1991

"We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++
programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy
Steele

"People 'get' types. They use them all the time. Telling someone he can't
pound a nail with a banana doesn't much surprise him."

"I think it would be a tragic statement of the universe if Java was the last
language that swept through." - James Gosling

"If everyone's going to reinvent a wheel, we might as well just provide the
damn wheel as part of the stock system" - Dan Sugalski

"The thing that I really hate about Smalltalk, though, is the fact that every
time I wish C++ or Java did something differently it turns out that Smalltalk
does it the way I want it to. I've never even used Smalltalk on a real
project. I just learned it so that I could read source code, now I keep
running into things that would be easier if I were using it. It's really
annoying." -- Phil Goodwin

"So, `bind' is `let' and monadic programming is equivalent to programming in
the A-normal form. That is indeed all there is to monads" -- Oleg K

"In the end, I think that strong types is only one thing that makes Haskell
programs work after compilation. The other ones are higher-order functions and
_purity_. No type system can achieve what purity offers." -- Apfelmus

"For me, the heart of functional programming is exactly this separation
between model and presentation. The former is naturally functional and
compositional, while the latter is often imperative/sequential and not-so-
compositional. IO belongs with the latter." -- Conal

And finally

"Please don't fall into the trap of believing that I am terribly dogmatical
about [the goto statement]. I have the uncomfortable feeling that others are
making a religion out of it, as if the conceptual problems of programming
could be solved by a single trick, by a simple form of coding discipline!" --
Edsger Dijkstra

~~~
norswap
"We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++
programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy
Steele

I always wondered which drug Steele was under when he wrote this, seen that
Java is actually is less adaptable than C++. Not to say that I prefer C++ over
Java, but it is strictly true that there are situations where you can avoid
repeating yourself in C++, while you can't in Java, and not the reverse.

~~~
masklinn
On the other hand, Java did bring acceptance for GCs and JITs, and
significantly quiet the "can't use non-native" crowd.

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biafra
C: a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language
with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language. (MIT Jargon
Dictionary)

SCNR

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JeanPierre
I think <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Programming_languages> has a better list
of programming language quotes. As this list, it contains a lot of ha-ha
jokes, but at least it contains more of the "good" quotes too.

------
AndrewDucker
The take-away message being that everyone likes to complain about the
languages they use, and even more about the languages they don't.

~~~
gaius
There are two kinds of languages, those that people hate and those that no-one
uses.

~~~
norswap
A variation of this is actually the last quote from the linked page.

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olalonde
_meta_ Wow, that ad at the bottom is sneaky. The first link is legitimate
while the rest are ads.

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gaius
COBOL and FORTRAN programmers, many of whom started out as BASIC programmers,
did the work that paid the taxes that paid the grants that let Dijkstra sneer
at them from his ivory tower. I say that he has done far more damage to the
field than any of those languages.

~~~
cobrausn
Don't take anything Dijkstra says personally. I don't think he's ever said
anything positive about any language, except perhaps Lisp, and even then it
was just a 'this isn't horrible' more than a positive.

Wish I could find that quote.

EDIT:

Found it - [http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-dijkstra-
bl...](http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-dijkstra-blogged-
about-lisp.html)

~~~
JackC
My favorite, from your link:

"[I]t has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking
previously impossible thoughts."

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hemingway
oh , I learn a lot of language but I think C is the most useful language

