“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
Martin Fowler
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, 1999
“Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.”
Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 1985
“The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.”
Grady Booch
Twitter, 2018
“Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do. ”
Donald Knuth
Literate Programming, 1984
“Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don’t fully understand something, it is an art to deal with it. ”
Donald Knuth
Turing Award Lecture, 1974