Niklaus Wirth Quotes

If you know how to make software, then you can create big things.

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.

It's something special being able to build a program up.

The hardest part of the software task is arriving at a complete and consistent specification, and much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.

I'm really good at making software for publishing.

The process of software development doesn't feel any better than it did a generation ago.

I designed and developed an unbelievable number of applications early in my life.

Code writers, they are my idols.

I was a programmer.

Software Engineering might be science; but that's not what I do. I'm a hacker, not an engineer.

There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors.

I started to write a new editor not too long ago and had it about half done after two days.

This will surprise some of your readers, but my primary interest is not with computer security. I am primarily interested in writing software that works as intended.

I know one business, and that's how to make software.

Program construction consists of a sequence of refinement steps.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

Whether you draw diagrams that generate code or you type at a browser, you are coding.

I don't like programming. It's tedious.

Listening, Testing, Coding, Designing. That's all there is to software. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive software than learning to touch type has to do with writing poetry

Anyone can squash a bug but all professors of this world couldn't build one.

The system is only as good as the person programming it. If you don't have the follow-through, your system is useless. And by the way, it's that way in parenting; it's that way in marriages.

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.

I am a programmer.

People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like. Otherwise the programs they write will be pretty weird.