Tony Hoare famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
-- Tony Hoare

#Roots #Evil #Forget
The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity.
-- Tony Hoare

#Simplicity #Reliability
Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.
-- Tony Hoare

#Language #Improvement #Programming
I don't know what the language of the year 2000 will look like, but I know it will be called Fortran.
-- Tony Hoare

#Years #Looks #Language
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.
-- Tony Hoare

#Learning #Numbers #Errors
An ultimate joint challenge for the biological and the computational sciences is the understanding of the mechanisms of the human brain, and its relationship with the human mind.
-- Tony Hoare

#Understanding #Challenges #Brain
I call it my billion-dollar mistake. It was the invention of the null reference in 1965.
-- Tony Hoare

#Mistake #Dollars #Null
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.
-- Tony Hoare

#Art #Learning #Simple
The job of formal methods is to elucidate the assumptions upon which formal correctness depends.
-- Tony Hoare

#Jobs #Assumption #Formal
In the development of the understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from the recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world and the decision to concentrate on these similarities and to ignore, for the time being, their differences.
-- Tony Hoare

#Powerful #Real #Learning
I couldn't resist the temptation to put in a null reference, simply because it was so easy to implement. This has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes, which have probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years.
-- Tony Hoare

#Pain #Years #Errors
At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way--and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.
-- Tony Hoare

#Determination #Simplicity #Quality
Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.
-- Tony Hoare

#Struggle #Simplicity #Program
Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.
-- Tony Hoare

#Roots #Evil #Programming
The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich may find hard to pay.
-- Tony Hoare

#Simplicity #May #Pay
You cannot teach beginners top-down programming, because they don't know which end is up.
-- Tony Hoare

#Trust #Beginners #Programming
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.
-- Tony Hoare

#Witty #Humorous #Simple

You may also like:

Alan Kay
Computer Scientist
Alan Perlis
Computer Scientist
Alan Turing
Mathematician
Bertrand Meyer
Author
Bill Gates
Investor
Bjarne Stroustrup
Scientist
David Gries
Computer Scientist
David Parnas
Dennis Ritchie
Computer Scientist
Donald Knuth
Computer Scientist
Edsger Dijkstra
Computer Scientist
Erich Gamma
Author
Fred Brooks
Software Engineer
John Backus
Computer Scientist
Ken Thompson
Computer Designer
Larry Wall
Programmer
Leslie Lamport
Computer Scientist
Martin Gardner
Science writer
Niklaus Wirth
Computer Scientist
Robert W. Floyd
Computer Scientist