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.

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.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

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.