The slashdot thing provoked this:
"The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A
language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a
very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language."
D. E. Knuth

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning."
Rich Cook

"As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my
own programs."
Maurice Wilkes, 1949

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense."
Professor Edsger Dijkstra