Alexander A. Stepanov > Quotes

“To be a good programmer, you need to understand the principles of generic programming. To understand the principles of generic programming, you need to understand abstraction. To understand abstraction, you need to understand the mathematics on which it’s based.”
― Alexander A. Stepanov, From Mathematics to Generic Programming

“To see how to make something more general, you need to start with something concrete. In particular, you need to understand the specifics of a particular domain to discover the right abstractions.”
― Alexander A Stepanov, From Mathematics to Generic Programming

“When writing code, it’s often the case that you end up computing a value that the calling function doesn’t currently need. Later, however, this value may be important when the code is called in a different situation. In this situation, you should obey the law of useful return: A procedure should return all the potentially useful information it computed.”
― Alexander A. Stepanov, From Mathematics to Generic Programming

“Performance constraints are good for creativity.”
― Alexander A. Stepanov, From Mathematics to Generic Programming