Programming Quotes API

Programming Quotes API for open source projects.

Visit: norwd.github.io/quotes

Github repo: github.com/norwd/quotes (forked from github.com/mudroljub/programming-quotes-api)

Feel free to get involved, suggest or implement new features.

API Documentation

The original implementation was written in JavaScript and hosted in Azure. As of 2025/10/16, the site is unreachable, and the project seems otherwise abandoned. My goal here is to instead host the same exact¹ quotes statically using GitHub Pages. Due to how GitHub Pages work, the JavaScript cannot be executed server side, and as such I’ve removed it, instead the quotes will be accessible statically, with some automation to allow pseudo-querying.

For obvious reasons, the api paths will be different, so this is not a drop in replacement for the original, however, I hope it will at least be a longer lived alternative.

Public Routes

GET /quotes/qotd

GET /quotes/qotd.json

• Description: Fetches programming quote of the day.

• Example: /quotes/qotd.json

  {
    "text": "If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it.",
    "author": "Linus Torvalds"
  }

GET /quotes/random

GET /quotes/random.json

• Description: Fetches a random programming quote. This is currently an alias of /quotes/qotd.

• Example: /quotes/random.json

  {
    "text": "Mathematicians stand on each others' shoulders and computer scientists stand on each others' toes.",
    "author": "Richard Hamming"
  }

GET /quotes/{lang}

GET /quotes/{lang}.json

• Description: Retrieves quotes by language (defaults to English if not yet translated).

• Example: /quotes/en.json

  [
    {
      "text": "When in doubt, use brute force.",
      "author": "Ken Thompson"
    },
    {
      "text": "One accurate measurement is worth more than a thousand expert opinions.",
      "author": "Grace Hopper"
    },
    {
      "text": "When there is no type hierarchy you don’t have to manage the type hierarchy.",
      "author": "Rob Pike"
    }
    ...
  ]

GET /quotes/{id}

GET /quotes/{id}.json

• Description: Retrieves a single quote by its unique ID.

• Example: /quotes/5a6ce86e2af929789500e7d7.json

  {
    "text": "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.",
    "author": "Edsger W. Dijkstra"
  }

GET /quotes/authors

GET /quotes/authors.json

• Description: Retrieves authors.

• Example: /quotes/authors.json

  [
    "Edsger W. Dijkstra",
    "Ken Thompson",
    "Donald Knuth",
    ...
  ]

GET /quotes/{author}

GET /quotes/{author}.json

• Description: Retrieves quotes by author.

• Example: /quotes/Edsger_W_Dijkstra.json

  [
    {
      "text": "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.",
      "author": "Edsger W. Dijkstra"
    },
    {
      "text": "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.",
      "author": "Edsger W. Dijkstra"
    },
    {
      "text": "The computing scientist’s main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making.",
      "author": "Edsger W. Dijkstra"
    }
    ...
  ]