Brian Kernighan Quotes

C is a razor-sharp tool, with which one can create an elegant and efficient program or a bloody mess.

I really enjoyed Princeton as a graduate student.

Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.

It's important to be informed about issues like usability, reliability, security, privacy, and some of the inherent limitations of computers.

Do what you think is interesting, do something that you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise you won't do it well anyway.

I had spent the summer of 1966 working at MIT in the group that was the MIT component of the Multics effort.

Every language teaches you something, so learning a language is never wasted, especially if it's different in more than just syntactic trivia.

Don't document bad code - rewrite it.

If you had done something twice, you are likely to do it again.

Believe the terrain, not the map

Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.

An effective way to test code is to exercise it at its natural boundaries

The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

90% of the functionality delivered now is better than 100% delivered never.

Trivia rarely affect efficiency. Are all the machinations worth it, when their primary effect is to make the code less readable?

Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.

For better or worse, the people who become leaders and decision makers in politics, law and business are going to come from schools like Princeton.

If you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?