“ Java is to JavaScript what Car is to Carpet. ” - Chris Heilmann

“ It's hard enough to find an error in your code when you're looking for it; it's even harder when you've assumed your code is error-free. ” - Steve McConnel

“ Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. ” - Brian Kernighan

“ It's not at all important to get it right the first time. It's vitally important to get it right the last time. ” - Andrew Hunt and David Thoma

“ First, solve the problem. Then, write the code. ” - John Johnson

“ Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration. ” - Stan Kelly-Bootle

“ Linux is only free if your time has no value. ” - Jamie Zawinsk

“ There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code. ” - Flon's Law

“ 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?" Improve the code and then document it to make it even clearer. ” - Steve McConnel

“ Programming can be fun, so can cryptography; however they should not be combined. ” - Kreitzberg and Shneiderman

“ Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable. ” - Ralph Johnson

“ Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. ” - Louis Srygley

“ When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop. ” - Alan Perlis

“ Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months might as well have been written by someone else. ” - Eagleson's law

Don't reinvent the wheels unless you want to learn about wheels

Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn’t like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701, writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs. -John W. Backus, FORTRAN developer

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– Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.– Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux