This is a list of awesome IT quotes. The aim is to collect all relevant quotes said over the history of IT.
Contribution guidelines can be found here
| Quote | Author |
|---|---|
| “Most software today is very much like
an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other,
with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands
of slaves.” “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.” |
|
| “A computer would deserve to be called
intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was
human.” “Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.” “We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” “Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.” “If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.” “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagined anything of who do the things that no one can imagine” |
|
| “It has become appallingly obvious that
our technology has exceeded our humanity.” “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” |
|
| “Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.” | |
| “Measuring programming progress by lines
of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”
“The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.” “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent” “The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” ”Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” ”The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.” |
|
| “I have always wished for my computer to
be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can
no longer figure out how to use my telephone.” “C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.” “Clearly, I reject the view that there is one way that is right for everyone and for every problem.” “A program that has not been tested does not work.” |
|
| “Privacy is an inherent human right, and
a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and
respect.” “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” “Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can’t break.” |
|
| “This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.” | |
| “It’s not enough that we build products
that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build
products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes,
beauty to people’s lives.” “A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.” |
|
| “First we thought the PC was a
calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with
ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics,
and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve
realized it’s a brochure.” “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” |
|
| “Raise your quality standards as high as you can live with, avoid wasting your time on routine problems, and always try to work as closely as possible at the boundary of your abilities. Do this, because it is the only way of discovering how that boundary should be moved foward.” | |
| “Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.” | |
| “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” | |
| “Failure is an option here. If things
are not failing, you are not innovating enough.” “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” “If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.” “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” “I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.” |
|
| “If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.” | |
| “Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” | |
| “A brand for a company is like a
reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things
well.” “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” |
|
| “Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.” | |
| “Technology frightens me to death. It’s designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers — which is why almost no technology ever works.” | |
| “It doesn’t matter what you know, what matters is when you know” | |
| “Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.” | |
| “One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.” | |
| “It is easier to port a shell than a
shell script.” “Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.” |
|
| “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.” “Software is like sex; it’s better when it’s free.” “Artists usually don’t make all that much money, and they often keep their artistic hobby despite the money rather than due to it.” “I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples’ ideas and making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn’t do.” “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” “Don’t hurry your code. Make sure it works well and is well designed. Don’t worry about timing” “Programmers are in the enviable position of not only getting to do what they want to, but because the end result is so important they get paid to do it. There are other professions like that, but not that many” “In many cases the user interface to a program is the most important part for a commercial company: whether the programs works correctly or not seems to be secondary” |
|
| “If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, ‘We’re sorry, here’s a coupon for two more.’” | |
| “Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” | |
| “If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.” | |
| “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” | |
| “To iterate is human, to recurse divine.” | |
| “It is impossible to fully specify or test an interactive system designed to respond to external inputs.” | |
| “People said I should accept the
world. Bullshit! I don’t accept the world.“ |
|
| “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.” | |
| “Great things in business are never done
by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” “Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” ”Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” |
|
| “Good code is its own best documentation. As you’re about to add a comment, ask yourself, ‘How can I improve the code so that this comment isn’t needed?’” | |
| “The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.” | |
| “There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.” | |
| “I don’t care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!” |
To the extent possible under law, Victor Laerte de Oliveira has waived all
copyright and related or neighboring rights to Awesome IT Quotes. This work is published
from: United
States.