There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.

The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.

I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran.

I was eventually persuaded of the need to design programming notations so as to maximize the number of errors which cannot be made, or if made, can be reliably detected at compile time.

I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.

What is the central core of the subject [computer science]? What is it that distinguishes it from the separate subjects with which it is related? What is the linking thread which gathers these disparate branches into a single discipline. My answer to these questions is simple -it is the art of programming a computer. It is the art of designing efficient and elegant methods of getting a computer to solve problems, theoretical or practical, small or large, simple or complex. It is the art of translating this design into an effective and accurate computer program.