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Ask HN: What are your favorite parables, anecdotes, idioms, etc.?
You can lead a horse to water... and what have you. Don't be shy about malapropisms either.
- solardev 2y agoThe secret to happiness is lower standards.
- montgomery_r 2y agoThe more I hear about inverse proportionality, the less I like it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AndrewOMartin 2y agoThis reminds me of something I like to say, "It's probably just confirmation bias, it's almost always confirmation bias".
- hackeraccount 2y agoIn theory practice is just like theory but in practice it's not like it at all.
- smitty1e 2y agoI like: "The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory."
- bravetraveler 2y agoIf you don't have time to do it right, you must have time to do it again
- solardev 2y agoIn my field (web dev), it's more like "if you don't have time to do it right, just leave after your promotion and let the next guy deal with it"
- bravetraveler 2y agoSame in my field (SRE/Architecture)! I know the struggle, friend :( It's tough. The internet has taught people the value in branding/advertising. I'm too exhausted from doing the work they skipped.
- 1024core 2y ago"Some people, when faced with a problem, think: I know, I'll use a regular expression. Now they have 2 problems."
- Nicholas_C 2y agoVictory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan
- randycupertino 2y ago"That dog just 'aint gonna hunt." One of my UK vendors recently said, "this went off like a damp squib" for something that didn't go over well. Basically means a firework that didn't light because it was wet.
- suranyami 2y agoA squib is what they use in movies to make something look like it’s been shot with a bullet. Kinda a little flat firework that ejects “stuff” explosively. Actors wear them under their costumes. They’re usually remote controlled
- smegsicle 2y agomore generally, a squib is a low-power explosive
- explaingarlic 2y ago"Prostate with grief" Many great sopranos quotes to go along, such as.. "Much like a child, a film has many parents".
- slivanes 2y agoMeasure twice, cuss once.
- skilled 2y agoYou are what you are in this world.
- ion9 2y agoTwo of my favorites: 1. We will burn that bridge when we get to it. 2. You cannot make a computer run faster but you can make it do less.
- audiodude 2y agoCode is written once but read a thousand times.
- xnx 2y ago"We build our computers the way we build our cities--over time, without a plan, on top of ruins." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ellen_Ullman https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ellen_Ullman
- suranyami 2y agoIf brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it. There are only 2 hard problems in computer science: 1. Naming things 2. Cache invalidation 3. Off-by-one errors 0. Asynchronous callbacks 7. Buffer overflowA203FE11980018900000
- nine_k 2y ago"There are two hard problems in computer science: (1) We have only one joke, and (2) it's not even very funny."
- suranyami 2y agoAh, but it’s an idempotent joke, so it’s funny no matter how many times you tell it!
- montgomery_r 2y agoEvery tome I try to learn what idempotent means, it’s as though I’m starting from scratch.
- nine_k 2y ago«Hofstadter's law states that a project always takes longer than expected, even when the law is taken into account.» (Jokes about recursion are always funny, take, for instance, this one.)
- nine_k 2y ago"Don't try to think outside the box. There is no box."
- audiodude 2y agoMake the easy, easy and the hard, possible.
- more_corn 2y agoAnd at Google we made impossible things possible, but at the cost of making easy things hard.
- erik_seaberg 2y agoEvery service is either deprecated or not ready yet.
- jand 2y ago"Was Hans nicht lernt, lernt Hänschen nimmermehr." german, roughly - "What Hans did not learn, his son will never learn." It is so obviously wrong as a generalized truth but painfully accurate on occasion. Cool about it: The reaction of others towards this saying is a great signal on their views regarding life, society and education.
- jtthe13 2y agoThe pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
- xnx 2y ago“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” ― Bjarne Stroustrup
- russfink 2y agoIt’s like hurting cats.
- suranyami 2y agoMy body is a temple: old, crumbing and full of unspeakable horrors.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mannyv 2y agoYou can't put 9 women in a room and get a baby in a month. - project manager adage.
- nine_k 2y ago"I bought for my manager two copies of Mythical Man-Month so that he could read it faster."
- readthenotes1 2y agoChildhood ends when you realize you're not the most important person in the room. Adolescense ends when you realize that just because you can does not mean you should. One form of evil is trying to make others suffer because you are. Parenting is love and consequences
- DonsDiscountGas 2y agoThe best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. (A less obvious but more memorable way of saying don't let perfect be the enemy of good)
- erik_seaberg 2y ago"Do we really need to test all our code?" "No, of course not! Only test the code that's supposed to work."
- erik_seaberg 2y ago"Now, this is only temporary ... unless it works."
- vikaveri 2y agoFew things are as permanent as a temporary fix that works
- jareklupinski 2y agoWe'll burn that bridge when we get to it.
- hackeraccount 2y agoI say that so much that I forget that it's a malapropism.
- bjourne 2y agoFool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... you can't fool me twice!
- squircle 2y agoIf you aren't making enemies you're doing it wrong. (You never know when you may need them / they may need you. Also, there's more than one way to bell a cat.
- zem 2y agocouple of jokes whose punchlines have stuck with me as personal catchphrases: 1. a city dweller was driving through the countryside when he saw a ladder propped against a tree, and a man on top of it holding a goat. he's curious enough to stop and find out what's going on. the guy says "oh, I'm feeding my goat leaves off the tree". the city guy asks "but doesn't that waste a lot of time?", and the farmer looks at him like he's an idiot and says "what's time to a goat?" 2. this one is from back when lift operators were a thing. the lift doors open and there's a furious guy waiting there, who immediately yells "where the hell have you been?!". the operator calmly replies "dude, where can you go in a lift?"
- AndrewOMartin 2y agoThe Programmers’ Credo: we do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.
- Quinzel 2y agoI like “have your cake and eat it too” - partly because it’s a pointless saying. You can always have cake and eat it, but you can’t eat your cake and then also have it. So what people should really say is that someone wants to “eat their cake and have it too” but they don’t. But that’s really what they mean by the saying “have your cake and eat it too”.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aranchelk 2y agoFrom The Teaching of Buddha: Once there was a man on a long journey who came to a river. He said to himself: “This side of the river is very difficult and dangerous to walk on, and the other side seems easier and safer, but how shall I get across?” So he built a raft out of branches and reeds and safely crossed the river. Then he thought to himself: “This raft has been very useful to me in crossing the river; I will not abandon it to rot on the bank, but will carry it along with me.” And thus he voluntarily assumed an unnecessary burden.
- krackers 2y agoIf my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike
- MaxHoppersGhost 2y agoIf my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.
- randycupertino 2y agoWhen that came up on a cooking show and the news anchors cracked up it was so funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-RfHC91Ewc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-RfHC91Ewc
- undopamine 2y agoQuote from Max Payne 2 on free will: "There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?' When you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions.."
- defrost 2y agoThe S in IoT is for Security, ... and the P is for Privacy.
- mlhpdx 2y ago> Now the shoemaker had enough money to buy leather for two pairs of shoes. Everything I need to know about business in one line of one old story.
- rich_sasha 2y agoYou can't cross a chasm in two small leaps.
- smitty1e 2y agoThe toothpaste of that ship was squeezed out of the open door of the horse barn, sails and all.
- ngshiheng 2y agoone of my all-time favorites was "We are so conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unawares" – from the blog post titled 'The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget' over the years, i kept my interesting finds at https://jerrynsh.com/food-for-thought/ https://jerrynsh.com/food-for-thought/
- friend_and_foe 2y agoIf you don't laugh you'll cry.
- Turboblack 2y agoWhat's old is not outdated, if it works, don't touch it
- Turboblack 2y agoWe live in the distant past, we are still not at all civilized
- Turboblack 2y agoA proctologist can enter IT if an IT specialist comes to him for doctor's appointment
- nopmat 2y ago“Are you scooping what I’m pooping?” Drill sergeant asking recruit if he understands what he has just been told.
- atsaloli 2y agoAs I told my daughter: You don’t have to brush all your teeth. Just the ones you want to keep.