Top 120 Programming Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Talk is cheap. Show me the code.”

— Linus Torvalds

Also featured in: Action Quotes, Teamwork Quotes, Innovation Quotes

2. “It’s harder to read code than to write it.”

— Joel Spolsky

3. “Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”

— Linus Torvalds

4. “Good software, like wine, takes time.”

— Joel Spolsky

5. “Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.”

— Bill Gates

6. “This is a software-powered world.”

— Satya Nadella

7. “One of my most productive days was throwing away 1,000 lines of code.”

— Ken Thompson

8. “Nothing works better than just improving your product.”

— Joel Spolsky

Also featured in: Startup Quotes

9. “Something is usable if it behaves exactly as expected.”

— Joel Spolsky

10. “Listen to your customers, not your competitors.”

— Joel Spolsky

11. “Software is eating the world.”

— Marc Andreessen

Also featured in: Quotes About the World

12. “Software is the magic thing whose importance only goes up over time.”

— Bill Gates

13. “Writing code is not production, it’s not always craftsmanship though it can be, it’s design.”

— Joel Spolsky

14. “The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.”

— Tom Cargill

15. “Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.”

— Alan Turing

16. “Indeed one of the best ways to deflect attacks is to make it look like they’re succeeding. It’s the software equivalent of playing dead.”

— Joel Spolsky

17. “Code never lies, comments sometimes do.”

— Ron Jeffries

18. “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”

— Martin Fowler

19. “If, at first, you do not succeed, call it version 1.0.”

— Khayri R.R. Woulfe

20. “Laziness is a programmers main virtue.”

— Larry Wall

Also featured in: Virtue Quotes

21. “Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft.”

— Richard Stallman

22. “Make it work, make it right, make it fast.”

— Kent Beck

23. “A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.”

— Doug Linder

24. “The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

25. “If you think it’s simple, then you have misunderstood the problem.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

26. “The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.”

— Dennis Ritchie

27. “Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.”

— Alan Turing

Also featured in: Quotes About Skills, Practice Quotes

28. “I’m not a great programmer; I’m just a good programmer with great habits.”

— Kent Beck

Also featured in: Habit Quotes

29. “Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”

— Rick Cook

Also featured in: Technology Quotes

30. “The programmers of tomorrow are the wizards of the future. You’re going to look like you have magic powers compared to everybody else.”

— Gabe Newell

31. “Programming is the art of telling another human being what one wants the computer to do.”

— Donald Knuth

32. “Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares.”

— Robert C. Martin

33. “eat(); sleep(); code(); repeat();”

— QuoteFancy Wallpaper

34. “Confusion is part of programming.”

— Felienne Hermans

35. “When done well, software is invisible.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

36. “Programming allows you to think about thinking, and while debugging you learn learning.”

— Nicholas Negroponte

37. “There’s a saying in the software design industry: “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.””

— Larry Wall

38. “Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.”

— IEEE Computer Society

39. “Programming is learned by writing programs.”

— Brian Kernighan

40. “The most fundamental problem in software development is complexity. There is only one basic way of dealing with complexity: divide and conquer.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

41. “A program that has not been tested does not work.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

42. “If you aren’t sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.”

— John Carmack

43. “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

44. “Computer programming is an art, because it applies accumulated knowledge to the world, because it requires skill and ingenuity, and especially because it produces objects of beauty. A programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better.”

— Donald Knuth

45. “One bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year.”

— David Parnas

46. “Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.”

— Brian Kernighan

47. “90% of the functionality delivered now is better than 100% delivered never.”

— Brian Kernighan

48. “Nobody should call themselves a professional if they only knew one language.”

— Bjarne Stroustrup

49. “You might not think that programmers are artists, but programming is an extremely creative profession. Its logic-based creativity.”

— John Romero

50. “Don’t document bad code – rewrite it.”

— Brian Kernighan