6 ms·

My Favourite Programming Quotes

78 points by cfontes 16y ago

Nice set, number 1 is really really true !

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
mrcharles 16y ago
The Monday one is especially true... I knew I should have stayed home today.
etaty 16y ago
more here : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512928 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512928
stcredzero 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      This was exactly my friend's theory of what happened.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Interesting, I'd always suspected that but never got around to tracking what times bugs were "created".
iwwr 16y ago
Java: write once, debug everywhere. If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
- metageek 16y ago
  Write once, run away.
cfontes 16y ago
I like the last one, about frozen water.
winestock 16y ago
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_programming_quotes_file_was_well_received_when/c0asp6j http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8y348/my_progra...) * 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 http://www.johnreilly.info/ggov.htm) Yeah, I know; this list goes to eleven.
- mixmax 16y ago
  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.
amalcon 16y ago
#8 is my favorite software quote of all time, but it's incomplete: The first method is far more difficult.
jeffbarr 16y ago
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 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 16y ago
  Wow, that is a huge collection.
notaddicted 16y ago
pitching in some longer quotes by prof. dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW... 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/EWD1051.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW... 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/EWD1175.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EW... 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. ...
pestaa 16y ago
"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 http://twitter.com/pestaa
jmtame 16y ago
“There are all these great programmers out there who think starting a startup requires esoteric business knowledge." - Paul Graham
thisisblurry 16y ago
There are also some excellent ones here: http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-all-time.html http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-...
cdibona 16y ago
I would have expected only 2 quotes, given the title.
- younata 16y ago
  I think it would have been better to have asked us for two quotes.
jwinter 16y ago
http://twitter.com/perlisisms http://twitter.com/perlisisms
uriel 16y ago
Here are my favorite programming quotes that I have been collecting for some years now: http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/ http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/
cafard 16y ago
One of Jon Bentley's _Programming Pearls_ books has a column, "Bumper-Sticker Computer Science" that is worth a glance.
tbrooks 16y ago
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 16y ago
Lots of good quotes here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-q... 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
Skofoo 16y ago
"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.

78 points by cfontes 16y ago

Nice set, number 1 is really really true !

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

mrcharles 16y ago

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

etaty 16y ago

more here : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512928 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512928

stcredzero 16y ago

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 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    This was exactly my friend's theory of what happened.
arethuza 16y ago
Interesting, I'd always suspected that but never got around to tracking what times bugs were "created".

iwwr 16y ago

Java: write once, debug everywhere. If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.

metageek 16y ago
Write once, run away.

cfontes 16y ago

I like the last one, about frozen water.

winestock 16y ago

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_programming_quotes_file_was_well_received_when/c0asp6j http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8y348/my_progra...) * 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 http://www.johnreilly.info/ggov.htm) Yeah, I know; this list goes to eleven.

mixmax 16y ago
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.

amalcon 16y ago

#8 is my favorite software quote of all time, but it's incomplete: The first method is far more difficult.

jeffbarr 16y ago

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 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 16y ago
Wow, that is a huge collection.

notaddicted 16y ago

pitching in some longer quotes by prof. dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW... 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/EWD1051.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW... 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/EWD1175.html http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EW... 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. ...

pestaa 16y ago

"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 http://twitter.com/pestaa

jmtame 16y ago

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

thisisblurry 16y ago

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

cdibona 16y ago

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

younata 16y ago
I think it would have been better to have asked us for two quotes.

jwinter 16y ago

http://twitter.com/perlisisms http://twitter.com/perlisisms

uriel 16y ago

Here are my favorite programming quotes that I have been collecting for some years now: http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/ http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/

cafard 16y ago

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

tbrooks 16y ago

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 16y ago

Lots of good quotes here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-q... 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

Skofoo 16y ago

"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.