

My Favourite Programming Quotes - cfontes
http://www.ginktage.com/2011/02/my-10-favourite-programming-quotes/
Nice set, number 1 is really really true !
======
winestock
Since we're sharing quotes, here are ten programming quotes that I like:

* If C++ has taught me one thing, it's this: Just because the system is consistent doesn't mean it's not the work of Satan.

\-- Andrew Plotkin

* We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.

\-- Ellen Ullman

* I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.

\-- Bjarne Stroustrup

* F U cn rd dis U mst uz Unix.

\-- Tim Roberts

* In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.

\-- Brian Reid

* Ah programming, never before has a profession held itself in such low esteem.

\-- Stevenvotich
([http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8y348/my_progra...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8y348/my_programming_quotes_file_was_well_received_when/c0asp6j))

* Now, I have to point out that making fun of Emacs Lisp is kind of like kicking a puppy... a puppy who's been dead since 1981.

\-- Jamie Zawinski

* An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one.

\-- Dan Ingalls, Design Principles Behind Smalltalk

* C will not only let you shoot yourself in the foot, it will hand you a new magazine when you run out of bullets.

\-- Charlie Stross

* Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

\-- Donald Knuth

* The Advanced Automation System suffered from that peculiar form of dissociation from reality which seems to happen only when lawyers try to tell engineers what to do.

\-- John J. Reilly (<http://www.johnreilly.info/ggov.htm>)

Yeah, I know; this list goes to eleven.

~~~
mixmax
Related to your list that goes to eleven:

There are only two hard problems in Computer Science: cache invalidation,
naming things, and off-by-one errors.

------
stcredzero
_Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of
the week debugging Monday’s code.

\--Christopher Thompson_

A friend of mine running an XP project got empirical numbers indicating that
some large fraction of the project's bugs were associated with check-ins after
4pm. So he made a rule: no check-ins after 4pm. Result: a whopping decrease in
the rate of new bugs.

YMMV.

~~~
albedoa
I know you said YMMV, but wouldn't it be expected that the rate of new bugs
would remain close to constant while their peak occurrences shift to earlier
in the afternoon? It's just moving a "deadline" back.

~~~
aasarava
This may be the case, but it might also turn out that the team is no longer
checking in rushed and untested code as they hurry to get out of the office
and go home for the evening. Instead, the may just hold off on checking in the
code until the next morning, at which point they've slept on it and possibly
thought about some edge cases they should test further, etc.

~~~
stcredzero
This was exactly my friend's theory of what happened.

------
jeffbarr
Did someone say programming quotes? Here's my collection, many dating back to
the 80's and 90's:

<http://www.jeff-barr.com/~jeff/quotes.txt>

A few of those are from my kids and from colleagues; most are from Usenet and
random mailing lists.

~~~
cfontes
Wow, that is a huge collection.

------
iwwr
_Java: write once, debug everywhere._

 _If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves
upon execution._

~~~
metageek
Write once, run away.

------
tbrooks
My favorite quote from _why:

"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than
ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create."

------
eneveu
Lots of good quotes here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-
programming-q...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-
quotes)

My favorites:

    
    
      Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your
      code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
    

\-- Rick Osborne

    
    
      I Hate Programming.
      I Hate Programming.
      I Hate Programming.
      It works!
      I Love Programming.

\-- Anonymous poem

------
pestaa
"Make it correct, make it clear, make it concise, make it fast. In that
order." Wes Dyer

"And companies should put more effort into strategies _how_ to handle occuring
bugs, instead of a "it-mustn't-be-so-it-can't-be" mentality."

"Though displays have grown in size and resolution in the last few years, eyes
haven't." Will Harris

Picked a few from my quote-collection stream. <http://twitter.com/pestaa>

------
amalcon
#8 is my favorite software quote of all time, but it's incomplete:

The first method is far more difficult.

------
thisisblurry
There are also some excellent ones here:
[http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-
of-...](http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-all-
time.html)

------
Skofoo
"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft
building progress by weight. "

Measuring aircraft progress by weight is actually viable because it is already
known what the final weight will be.

------
uriel
Here are my favorite programming quotes that I have been collecting for some
years now:

<http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/>

------
jmtame
“There are all these great programmers out there who think starting a startup
requires esoteric business knowledge." - Paul Graham

------
notaddicted
pitching in some longer quotes by prof. dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra:

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code, we should not
regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent": the current conventional
wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger.

...

needless to say, refusal to exploit this power of down-to-earth mathematics
amounts to intellectual and technological suicide.

...

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1051.html)

In other words, when building sand castles on the beach, we can ignore the
waves but watch the tide.

...

The other day I found in the University bookstore in Eindhoven a book on how
to use “Wordperfect 5.0” of more than 850 pages, in fact a dozen pages more
than my 1951 edition of Georg Joos, “Theoretical Physics”. It is time to
unmask the computing community as a Secret Society for the Creation and
Preservation of Artificial Complexity.

...

[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1175.html)

against "teamwork"

In the wake of the Cultural Revolution and now of the recession I observe a
mounting pressure to co-operate and to promote "teamwork". For its anti-
individualistic streak, such a drive is of course highly suspect; some people
may not be so sensitive to it, but having seen the Hitlerjugend in action
suffices for the rest of your life to be very wary of "team spirit". Very. I
have even read one text that argued that university scientists should co-
operate more in order to become more competitive..... Bureaucracies are in
favour of teamwork because a few groups are easier to control than a large
number of rugged individuals. Granting agencies are in favour of supporting
large established organizations rather than individual researchers, because
the support of the latter, though much cheaper, is felt to be more risky; it
also requires more thinking per dollar funding. Teamwork is also promoted
because it is supposed to be more efficient, though in general this hope is
not justified.

...

It is the weak departments that are more tempted to seek each other's support
and to believe that there is might in numbers. But such co-operation is of
course based on the theory that, when you tie two stones together, the
combination will float.

...

To quote Harvey Earl of GM: "General Motors is in business for only one
reason. To make money. In order to do that we make cars. But if we could make
money by making garbage cans, we would make garbage cans.". Some people might
argue that they even tried to make money by making garbage. But the product is
secondary; to quote Harvey Earl again: "Listen, I'd put smokestacks right in
the middle of the sons of bitches if I thought I could sell more cars.". These
quotations are from the fifties, but things have not changed that much.

...

Academic computing science is doing fine, thank you, and unless I am totally
mistaken, it will have a profound influence. I am not referring to the changes
that result from computers in their capacity of tools. Okay, the equipment
opens new opportunities for the entertainment industry, but who cares about
that anyhow. The equipment has enabled the airline industry to make its rates
so complicated and volatile that you need an expert to buy a ticket, and for
this discouragement of air travel we can be grateful, but the true impact
comes from the equipment in its capacity of intellectual challenge.

...

------
etaty
more here : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512928>

------
cafard
One of Jon Bentley's _Programming Pearls_ books has a column, "Bumper-Sticker
Computer Science" that is worth a glance.

------
jwinter
<http://twitter.com/perlisisms>

------
mrcharles
The Monday one is especially true... I knew I should have stayed home today.

------
cdibona
I would have expected only 2 quotes, given the title.

~~~
younata
I think it would have been better to have asked us for two quotes.

------
cfontes
I like the last one, about frozen water.

