Brian Kernighan Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

Believe the terrain, not the map

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

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

Don’t document bad code – rewrite it.

… it is a fundamental principle of testing that you must know in advance the answer each test case is supposed to produce. If you don’t, you are not testing; you are experimenting.

Mechanical rules are never a substitute for clarity of thought.

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