A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

Programming is not about what you know.
It's about what you can figure out.

Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose master, the user, should be able to control it. If designers and programmers think about the apparent mental qualities that their programs will have, they'll create programs that are easier and pleasanter — more humane — to deal with.

the job of programming can be fruitfully looked at from the point of view of testing alone — considering that the only real problem in programming is getting the program to work correctly and proving it.

The Turing test is a popular approach, but it flies in the face of the standard scientific method, which starts with the easier problems before facing the harder ones. Thus I soon raised the question with myself, “What is the smallest or close to the smallest program I would believe could think?” Clearly, if the program were divided into two parts, then neither piece could think. I tried thinking about it each night as I put my head on the pillow to sleep, and after a year of considering the problem and getting nowhere I decided it was the wrong question! Perhaps “thinking” is not a yes/no thing, but maybe it is a matter of degree.

The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best dangerous.

The problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

Programming, when stripped of all its circumstantial irrelevancies, boils down to no more and no less than very effective thinking so as to avoid unmastered complexity, to very vigorous separation of your many different concerns.

It [thought] is a mechanical thing and can solve only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.

To program is to understand.

Our most important thinking machines will not be machines that can think what we think faster, better, but those that think what we can’t think.

The programmers have a saying, you know? 'If we understand how we do it, it isn't artificial intelligence anymore.'"