Quotes about programming languages

What computer scientists, authors and programmers think of popular programming languages.

All languages

Tony Hoare quote about programming languages
Tony (C.A.R.) Hoare.
Computing professor, implemented Algol 60, searcher at Microsoft Research.

Algol 60 (Then taken in C)

Tony (C.A.R.) Hoare.


"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that [sic] have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."
E. W. Dijkstra in "How do we tell truths that might hurt?".
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra contributed to the first Algol 60 compiler. Known for the Disjkstra algorithm and numerous contributions to computer science.


Waldi Ravens. Programmer.

Blair P. Houghton. Programmer.

"Going from programming in Pascal to programming in C, is like learning to write in Morse code."
J.P. Candusso. Programmer.

Robert Firth. Author of programming books.

Bob Gray. Author.

"It's 5.50 a.m.... Do you know where your stack pointer is?"


"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. In C++ it's harder, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg."
Bjarne Stroustrup. Creator of C++.

Ron Sercely. Programmer.

Alan Kay. Creator of Smalltalk.

"The latest new features in C++ are designed to fix the previously new features in C++."
David Jameson. Author.

Richard A. O'Keefe. Computer scientist.

"Ever spend a little time reading comp.lang.c++ ? That's really the best place to learn about the number of C++ users looking for a better language."
R. William Beckwith.

"C++ has its place in the history of programming languages. Just as Caligula has his place in the history of the Roman Empire."
Robert Firth.

"Java is C++ without the guns, knives, and clubs."
James Gosling, co-inventor of Java.

"C++ is an horrible language. Even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C."
Linus Torvalds, inventor of Linux.


E.W. Dijkstra in "How do we tell truths that might hurt?".


Alan J. Perlis. Computer scientist and professor (Yale).

E. W. Dijkstra.

"FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular."
Ken Thompson. Co-creator of B, Unix, Plan 9 and the Go programming language.


Robert Sewell. Programmer.


"Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material."
Alan Kay.


"Perl is the only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption."
Keith Bostic. Programmer, created Sleepycat, contributed to free BSD unices.


Jon Ribbens. Programmer.

Bash and other shells

Larry Wall. Creator of Perl.

And finally...

Bjarne Stroustrup.

Unfortunately, I believe he is right. However, there have always been two schools, one for clear and safe languages (Pascal, and then scripting languages) and the other for languages facilitating hacking but with random results.