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Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
--
The Cathedral and the Bazaar

 

Eric S. Raymond

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Just as other information should be available to those who want to learn and understand, program source code is the only means for programmers to learn the art from their predecessors. It would be unthinkable for playwrights not to allow other playwrights to read their plays, but only be present at theater performances where they would be barred even from taking notes. Likewise, any good author is well read, as every child who learns to write will read hundreds of times more than it writes. Programmers, however, are expected to invent the alphabet and learn to write long novels all on their own. Programming cannot grow and learn unless the next generation of programmers have access to the knowledge and information gathered by other programmers before them.

 

Erik Naggum

 

Mostly, you write a script and someone’s gonna rewrite you. They get hundreds of—not hundred but they get ten writers to write something. If you have a big budget, you can go and get a lot of people to write on script .... I just actually heard that somebody said, 'Well, your screenplay got bought and now someone like Carrie Fisher will come in and rewrite you.' And I feel terrible, you know, because that’s not what I mean to do. My idea was never to raid something and trash it, you know. ‘Cause that – that’s more work for me!

 

Carrie Fisher

 

I like the observation that Forth is an amplifier: a good programmer can write a great program; a bad programmer a terrible one. I feel no need to cater to bad programmers.

 

Charles Moore

 

Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

 

Lawrence Lessig

 

Of all the stuff I write, probably 75% never gets recorded. Sometimes it's because I've read it at shows a few times to lukewarm response. But usually it's because I think it's not right. I will sometimes rewrite the same idea a few times before it feels good. I do this as opposed to taking a piece and tinkering with it in an effort to make it right. The earlier drafts wouldn't (and shouldn't) get recorded, because they're not as good.

 

John S. Hall