Niklaus Wirth Quotes
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Prolific programmers contribute to certain disaster.
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Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy.
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Complexity has and will maintain a strong fascination for many people. It is true that we live in a complex world and strive to solve inherently complex problems, which often do require complex mechanisms. However, this should not diminish our desire for elegant solutions, which convince by their clarity and effectiveness. Simple, elegant solutions are more effective, but they are harder to find than complex ones, and they require more time, which we too often believe to be unaffordable
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Experience shows that the success of a programming course critically depends on the choice of these examples.
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Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.
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Good engineering is characterized by gradual, stepwise refinement of products that yields increased performance under given constraints and with given resources.
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Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.
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A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do.
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Go To statement considered harmful.
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I have never designed a language for its own sake.
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A primary cause of complexity is that software vendors uncritically adopt almost any feature that users want.
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My being a teacher had a decisive influence on making language and systems as simple as possible so that in my teaching, I could concentrate on the essential issues of programming rather than on details of language and notation.
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The belief that complex systems require armies of designers and programmers is wrong. A system that is not understood in its entirety, or at least to a significant degree of detail by a single individual, should probably not be built.
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Nevertheless, I consider OOP as an aspect of programming in the large; that is, as an aspect that logically follows programming in the small and requires sound knowledge of procedural programming.
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C++ is an insult to the human brain
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Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Ni-klows Wirt'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nick-les Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value.
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The possible solutions to a given problem emerge as the leaves of a tree, each node representing a point of deliberation and decision.
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But active programming consists of the design of new programs, rather than contemplation of old programs.
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It is evidently necessary to generate and test candidates for solutions in some systematic manner.
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Program construction consists of a sequence of refinement steps.
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Programs should be written and polished until they acquire publication quality.
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Increasingly, people seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication, which is baffling -- the incomprehensible should cause suspicion rather than admiration.
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Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of the designer.
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Indeed, the woes of Software Engineering are not due to lack of tools, or proper management, but largely due to lack of sufficient technical competence.
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Programming is usually taught by examples.
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Professors typically spend their time in meetings about planning, policy, proposals, fund-raising, consulting, interviewing, traveling, and so forth, but spend relatively little time at their drawing boards. As a result, they lose touch with the substance of their rapidly developing subject. They lose the ability to design; they lose sight of what is essential; and they resign themselves to teach academically challenging puzzles.
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My duty as a teacher is to train, educate future programmers.
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In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.
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During the process of stepwise refinement, a notation which is natural to the problem in hand should be used as long as possible.
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Time pressure gradually corrupts an engineer's standard of quality and perfection. It has a detrimental effect on people as well as products
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