> [!abstract] How these were sourced > Every quotation carries a note saying where it was said or written, using the [[Disclaimer]]'s vocabulary. Where the popular wording differs from the documented one, the note says so. One entry is marked **attributed** because nothing better could be found. Popular lines that could not be traced were replaced with documented ones from the same person, and one that belonged to someone else was removed; the notes say which. Sourcing was done by an AI research agent on 2026-09-20, which read some sources directly and relied on Wikiquote and Quote Investigator for others. No person opened the sources. ## Notable Programmers and Their Quotes (Chronological Order) - [**Ada Lovelace** (1815-1852)](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/ada-lovelace-the-first-tech-visionary): First computer programmer - "Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science." *(Unpublished essay, 5 January 1841; printed in Betty A. Toole, Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, 1992. Reputable secondary: the book itself was not consulted)* - "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." *(Note G, her notes to Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine," Scientific Memoirs vol. 3, 1843. The original italicises "originate" and "we know how to order it")* - [**John von Neumann** (1903-1957)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-von-Neumann): Hungarian-American mathematician and computer science pioneer - "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." *(Remark at the first national ACM meeting, 1947, as recalled by Franz Alt, Communications of the ACM 15(7), July 1972. Secondhand)* - "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." *(Reply to physicist Felix T. Smith, reported in Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, 1979. Secondhand; no earlier record)* - [**Grace Hopper** (1906-1992)](https://president.yale.edu/biography-grace-murray-hopper): Invented first compiler, popularized "bug" term - "A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for." *(Hopper called it "a motto that has stuck with me"; Henry Tropp, Abacus 2(1), 1984. Originally John A. Shedd, Salt from My Attic, 1928)* - "Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise." *(Philip Schieber, "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper," OCLC Newsletter no. 167, March/April 1987. This replaces a longer popular version that could not be traced)* - [**Alan Turing** (1912-1954)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/): Father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence - "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done." *("Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind 59(236), 1950; the closing sentence)* - [**Hedy Lamarr** (1914-2000)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hedy-Lamarr): Austrian-American actress and inventor of frequency hopping technology - "Hope and curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. That's the way I was. The unknown was always so attractive to me... and still is." *(**Attributed.** Credited to Ecstasy and Me, 1966, which was ghostwritten and which Lamarr sued over, calling it false. Her documented remarks about inventing come from 1990 interview tapes that could not be consulted)* - [**Christopher Strachey** (1916-1975)](https://history.computer.org/pioneers/strachey.html): Pioneer in programming language design - "I am quite convinced that in fact computing will become a very important science. But at the moment we are in a very primitive state of development; we don't know the basic principles yet and we must learn them first." *(Software Engineering Techniques, report on the NATO conference, Rome, October 1969. This replaces a popular line about "being clever" that could not be traced)* - [**Katherine Johnson** (1918-2020)](https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/langley/katherine-johnson-biography/): NASA mathematician whose calculations were critical to early U.S. space missions - "I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed... anything that could be counted, I did." *(NASA feature, "Katherine Johnson: The Girl Who Loved to Count," 24 November 2015)* - "Like what you do and then you will do your best." *(NASA Science profile, c. 2016-17. In full: "Do your best. But like it! Like what you do and then you will do your best. If you don't like it, shame on you.")* - [**Frances Allen** (1932-2020)](https://www.ibm.com/history/frances-allen): Compiler optimization pioneer, first female Turing Award winner - "I'd like to see a new generation of women experience the excitement I feel for the whole of my field." *(Keynote, Grace Hopper Celebration, 2008; ACM Turing Award transcript. This replaces a popular "role model" line that could not be traced)* - [**Margaret Hamilton** (1936-present)](https://news.mit.edu/2016/scene-at-mit-margaret-hamilton-apollo-code-0817): Led Apollo space program software development - "Software during the early days of this project was treated like a stepchild and not taken as seriously as other engineering disciplines." *(Interview with Jaime Rubio Hancock, Verne / El País, 25 December 2014; the sentence continues "...and it was regarded as an art and as magic, not a science")* - "Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners." *("Recalling the 'Giant Leap'," MIT News, 17 July 2009)* - [**Lynn Conway** (1938-2024)](https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-lynn-conway-1938-2024/): Pioneering computer scientist and electrical engineer - "If you want to change the future, start living as if you're already there." *(Epigraph on her own homepage at the University of Michigan, signed; undated)* - [**Donald Knuth** (1938-present)](https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Knuth/): Computer scientist and mathematician, creator of TeX - "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." *("Structured Programming with go to Statements," Computing Surveys 6(4), December 1974. In full: "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil." Knuth later called it "Hoare's dictum"; Hoare disclaimed it, and the evidence points to Knuth)* - "Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." *(Foreword to Petkovšek, Wilf and Zeilberger, A=B, 1996)* - [**Barbara Liskov** (1939-present)](https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/liskov_1108679.cfm): Developed Liskov Substitution Principle, Turing Award winner - "Designing something just powerful enough is an art." *(Interview with Susan D'Agostino, Quanta Magazine, 20 November 2019)* - [**Alan Kay** (1940-present)](https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/kay_3972189.cfm): Pioneered object-oriented programming and graphical user interfaces, Turing Award winner - "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." *(Earliest print: InfoWorld, April 1982; Kay dates it to a 1971 Xerox PARC meeting. The longer version beginning "Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do" comes only from his own 1998 recollection. Dennis Gabor wrote something close in Inventing the Future, 1963)* - [**Jerry Lawson** (1940-2011)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jerry-Lawson): African American engineer who created the first cartridge-based video game console - "The whole reason I did games was because people said, 'You can't do it.' I'm one of the guys, if you tell me I can't do something, I'll turn around and do it." *(Interview, San Jose Mercury News, March 2011, as quoted in his obituaries. Reputable secondary: the original page was not located)* - [**Dennis Ritchie** (1941-2011)](https://www.nae.edu/190631/DENNIS-M-RITCHIE-19412011): Creator of C programming language and co-developer of Unix - "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." *("The Development of the C Language," HOPL-II, 1993. This page previously carried two other lines. One, about filling a vacuum, is Rob Pike's remark about the X Window System, misfiled under Ritchie in a widely copied quotes file. The other, about UNIX and genius, has no findable origin)* - [**Radia Perlman** (1951-present)](https://www.invent.org/inductees/radia-perlman): Invented the spanning-tree protocol - "The Internet was not invented by any individual." *(Interview with Rebecca J. Rosen, "Radia Perlman: Don't Call Me the Mother of the Internet," The Atlantic, 3 March 2014. The popular line "the internet has no mother" is a paraphrase of this interview)* - "The world would be a better place if more engineers, like me, hated technology. The stuff I design, if I'm successful, nobody will ever notice." *(Interview with Alexander Pasik, Computerworld, 22 April 2011; it continues "Things will just work, and be self-managing")* - [**Guido van Rossum** (1956-present)](https://gvanrossum.github.io/): Creator of Python programming language - "You primarily write your code to communicate with other coders, and, to a lesser extent, to impose your will on the computer." *(Dropbox Blog, "The Mind at Work," 25 November 2019. This replaces a popular line about schools teaching programming that could not be traced to him)* - [**Sophie Wilson** (1957-present)](https://computerhistory.org/profile/sophie-wilson/): Designer of the ARM processor instruction set - "Not knowing something is impossible has interesting effects on your work." *(Computer History Museum Fellow profile, 2012; the original occasion is not stated)* - [**Shafi Goldwasser** (1958-present)](https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/goldwasser_8627889.cfm): Cryptography and complexity theory expert, Turing Award winner - "Cryptography is about communication in the presence of an adversary." *(Goldwasser and Bellare, Lecture Notes on Cryptography, MIT, 2008 edition, opening sentence; co-authored. This replaces a popular line that could not be traced)* - [**Megan Smith** (1964-present)](https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/alumni-spotlight-megan-smith-sb-%E2%80%9986-sm-%E2%80%9988): Former CTO of the United States under President Obama - "We know that diversity can sometimes be more uncomfortable because things are less familiar, but it gets the best results." *(MIT Mechanical Engineering alumni spotlight, 13 December 2014, on her Grace Hopper Celebration keynote)* - [**Satya Nadella** (1967-present)](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Satya-Nadella): Indian-American CEO of Microsoft - "Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation." *(First email to employees as CEO, 4 February 2014. The popular "the best code is poetry" is reported speech from a Microsoft profile published the same day, not a direct quotation)* - [**Linus Torvalds** (1969-present)](https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/linus-torvalds): Creator of Linux and Git - "I am not a visionary, I'm an engineer. I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds... but I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in." *(TED talk, "The mind behind Linux," February 2016. Often misquoted as "looking at the stars")* - "Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." *(git mailing list, 27 June 2006)* ## Related - [[How To Get Started]] - [[Corrections]]