The idling of men is called business; the idling of boys, though exactly like, is punished by those same men: and no one pities either boys or men.

— Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought

We, programmers, are the ones who speak to the machines and make them work. We are the ones who breathe life into them, and into our economies and societies. Nothing happens in this world without us. We—rule the world! Other people think they rule the world and then they hand those rules to us and we write the rules that execute in the machines that govern everything.

— Robert C. Martin, We, Programmers

If you look at any list of cult characteristics, you’ll see items that could easily describe political parties and corporations—“group members encouraged to distrust outside criticism as having hidden motives,” “hierarchical authoritative structure.”

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, How to Actually Change Your Mind

We always spend more time maintaining and changing software than on initial development.

— Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson, Head First Design Patterns

The level of change in our industry is impressive, but my thesis is that much of this change is not really significant.

— David Farley, Modern Software Engineering