No, the best way to prepare 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 I fished out listings of their operating system.
- Bill Gates

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981

I have a spelling checker It came with my PC; It plainly
marks four my revue Mistakes I cannot sea. I've run this
poem threw it, I'm sure your pleased too no, Its letter
perfect in it's weigh, My checker tolled me sew.
- Janet Minor

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it
says something about human nature that the only form of life
we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created
life in our own image.
- Stephen Hawking

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.
- Larry Wall

Murphy's Laws :
    If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the
    one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go
    wrong.

    Corollary:
        If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will
        happen then.

    Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

    If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously
    overlooked something.

    Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be
    done first.

    If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
    
    It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools
    are so ingenious.

    Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
    
    In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension
    can be totalled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The
    correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on
    Monday.

    If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
    
    Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
    temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the
    organism will do as it damn well pleases.

    To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will
    take the longest and cost the most.

    The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional
    to the level of management.
    
    Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will
    want to use it.
    
    Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

    The primary function of the design engineer is to make
    things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the
    serviceman.

    Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more
    unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is
    unreliable.

    Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
    discovers something which either abolishes the system or
    expands it beyond recognition.

    If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a
    procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth
    way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

    Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is
    obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts
    which are still under development.

    Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least
    accessible corner. 

    A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final
    inspection.

    Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.
    
    When all else fails, read the instructions.

    
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
- Jeff Pesis

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to
choose from.

Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand wrong
answers.

What goes up must come down.
Ask any system administrator.

It is only when they go wrong that
machines remind you how powerful they are.
- Clive James

I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers.
- Thomas Watson, IBM boss, 1943

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.
- Rich Cook

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle
as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get
one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year,
killing everyone inside.
- Robert X Cringely

There's an old story about the person who wished his
computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has
come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.
- Stroustrup

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most
experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in;
we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
- Nathaniel Borenstein

The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service,
which failed to initialize because of the following error:
The operation completed successfully.
- Windows NT Server v3.51

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication. The device is
inherently of no value to us.
- Western Union internal memo, 1876

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but
'That's funny ..'
- Isaac Asimov

The danger from computers is not that they will eventually
get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet
them halfway.
- Bernard Avishai

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.
- Bjarne Stroustrup

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote
programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would
destroy civilization.

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in
their home.
- Ken Olson, 1977, then Chairman of Digital Equipment

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should,
therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
- Edsgar Dijkstra

In theory, there is no difference between theory and
practice. But, in practice, there is.
- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

He who hasn't hacked assembly language as a youth has no
heart. He who does as an adult has no brain.
- John Moore

The NeXT Computer: The hardware makes it a PC, the software
makes it a workstation, the unit sales makes it a mainframe.

Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real
programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all
night.

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and
thinking what nobody has thought.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
    Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
    handle.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not
everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein

Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to
write, it should be hard to understand.

Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to
support it for the rest of your life.
- Michael Sinz

The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful
hypothesis by an ugly fact.
- Aldous Huxley

Nothing is as embarrasing as watching someone do something
that you said couldn't be done.
- Sam Ewing

Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root
of PI using Roman numerals.
- Henry Spencer

The computer is a great invention, there are just as many
mistakes as ever, but they are nobody's fault.