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Programmers' Proverbs (I'd love some input)
- mattgreenrocks 13y agoA few more: * Read whitepapers, not blog posts * "Just ship" is no substitute for design * Attempt personal projects that are big enough to scare you * Today's fashion is tomorrow's legacy * Learn weird languages to broaden your horizons * Industry focuses on technologies at the expense of practice and discipline
- barking 13y agoHere's mine, doubtless it's not original but it is born from my experience: "The better the job you do, the more they discount the level of difficulty"
- jamesbritt 13y ago"Spell-check is your friend." I prefer koans to proverbs. Proverbs strike me as code without tests; they may seem superficially correct, but where's the proof? Koans get you to think though a situation and (hopefully) arrive at an understanding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan
- antjanus 13y agoI never knew about those but I like proverbs better, simply because of how short they are and how one can easily connect with them.
- mfish 13y agoyou got one wrong. i think it is supposed to read: "ONLY commit on master when drunk."
- jtwarren 13y agoCoding, committing, pushing. Pick two (when drinking).
- iamthepieman 13y agoNot specific to programming - With excellence comes understanding. With understanding comes excellence. Practice both.
- AdrianRossouw 13y agoShow me you algorithm and I will remain puzzled, but show me your data structure and I will be enlightened. -- Old programming proverb You should totally read codelesscode too - http://thecodelesscode.com/ http://thecodelesscode.com/
- floil 13y agoDeprecated is a synonym for correct.
- dandrews 13y agoNot really programmer related, but I find these truthy: - (Flight instructor's mantra): Fly the plane. - When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. - Measure twice, cut once. - (Paraphrasing Senator Moynihan): Show me the data. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
- hardwaresofton 13y agoI personally love "Facebook wasn't built in a day" gonna start saying it in real life
- antjanus 13y agoThanks! :) It reminds me of the craigslist posts about how an "idea guy" wants to build a site "just like facebook but better" and they're offering a few hundred dollars. "You can build that in less than a week, right?"
- AnimalMuppet 13y agoIf you make it "better" by removing features, you might get closer than you expect...
- ameoba 13y agoThe timeless Epigrams on Programming: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html There's a few dated references that show its origins in 1982 but most of the fundamentals still stand.
- bttf 13y ago- When all else fails, RTFC Also, for TDD enthusiasts: - Test first, ask questions later
- rogerbinns 13y ago“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.” ― C.A.R. Hoare http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/266154.C_A_R_Hoare http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/266154.C_A_R_Hoare
- clavalle 13y ago"If the documentation is clear, concise, and easy to understand it is out of date." -- Me This is a corollary of the much more general law: "All documentation is out of date."
- colanderman 13y ago"The buggiest code is that which has had the most bugs fixed." or "Buggy code is buggy." (That is, having had bugs fixed is an indicator that the code is either complex or poorly written, and is likely to harbor further undiscovered (or newly introduced) bugs.)
- zxcdw 13y agoCould the first also imply towards that all code is buggy, absence of proof doesn't equal proof of absence. As in, if you don't find bugs yet, it doesn't mean they don't exist.
- colanderman 13y agoAu contraire – the evidence of absence of bugs is that the code works. (i.e., to some degree, programs find their own bugs simply by being used.) Code that has been humming along issue-free is likely either simple, or well-written, and harbors few, if any, bugs. Otherwise, they would have evinced themselves by now.
- blueblob 13y agoI believe openSSL has been humming along issue free for quite a while before a somewhat famous bug popped up for some anecdotal evidence at a refutation.
- LukeB_UK 13y agoNot sure it 100% fits here, but one that's stuck with me for years was said my my P.E. teacher: "Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent"
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoLove it! Same in music: hours spend mangling a piece makes you good at mangling that piece. Much better to do deliberate practice - slowly move through nailing every phrase, every note. Then speed up.
- _dark_matter_ 13y agoVariation on the theme - "Perfect practice makes perfect".
- LukeB_UK 13y agoNot sure it 100% fits here, but one that's stuck with me for years was said my my P.E. teacher: "Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent"
- the1 13y agopremature optimization be roots of every evils.
- sakri 13y agoA wise old Chinese man once said : To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
- ColinDabritz 13y agoVariations on a theme: The best code is the code never written. The most secure code is the code never written. The most reliable code is the code never written. The fastest code is the code never written. Less is more. Related to the classic quote: "It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." -Antoine de Saint-Exupery And some others: Days of development can save hours of planning. Your real problem is that you don't understand your problem. Reading code is harder than writing code. Could get a LOT based on this: Frequently Forgotten Facts about Software Engineering http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~hendrix/comp6710/readings/Forgotten_Fundamentals_IEEE_Software_May_2001.pdf http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~hendrix/comp6710/readings/Forgott... [PDF] (Also in book form, "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering" Robert Glass)
- pjmorris 13y agoGreat theme. I'm reminded of a Gordon Bell quote found in Jon Bentley's 'Programming Pearls': 'The cheapest, fastest and most reliable components of a computer system are those that aren't there.'
- ColinDabritz 13y agoI've heard variations on them for some time, It's possible I or others got them from there. Thanks much for the citation.
- espeed 13y agoFrom Clojure/Emacs cider-words-of-inspiration... "The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay" "A point of view is worth 80 IQ points. -Alan Kay" "Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material. -Alan Kay" "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible. -Alan Kay" "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. -Bill Gates" "Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -Brian Kernighan" "The unavoidable price of reliability is simplicity. -C.A.R. Hoare" "You're bound to be unhappy if you optimize everything. -Donald Knuth" "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. -Edsger W. Dijkstra" "Deleted code is debugged code. -Jeff Sickel" "The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases. -Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy" "First, solve the problem. Then, write the code. -John Johnson" "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -Leonardo da Vinci" "Programming is not about typing... it's about thinking. -Rich Hickey" "Design is about pulling things apart. -Rich Hickey" "Programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing. -Rich Hickey" "Code never lies, comments sometimes do. -Ron Jeffries" "The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. -Isaac Asimov" Source: https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/cider-client.el#L39 https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/cider-cli...
- shawndumas 13y agoThere's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
- Jabbles 13y agoIs having a beard something that all programmers should strive for? Or just the men?
- dethstar 13y agoas a man with little to no beard I think that greybeard is just a reference to wise old people ala Gandlaf. I guess grey hair could work too?
- antjanus 13y agoOP here, I can't grow a beard, but yeah, that's pretty much what it is. It's a reference to how "beards" have become a symbol in popular culture associated with wisdom. The highest level of such beardage is the "greybeard" while the lowest is "neckbeard" (associated with people who don't know anything but pretend to). Anyways. Here's more info on it: * http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/beard-programmers-final-two.png http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/blogs/wiredenterpris... * http://24.media.tumblr.com/727eff26ad15978277db9525c354f75d/tumblr_mhenx9s5iJ1qa128so1_500.png http://24.media.tumblr.com/727eff26ad15978277db9525c354f75d/... * http://www.diebenow.com/sites/default/files/Web-Developer-Employment-Beard.jpg http://www.diebenow.com/sites/default/files/Web-Developer-Em... And a guide to Beard of Silicon Valley: http://www.wired.com/2012/11/20-12-st_beardtaxonomy/ http://www.wired.com/2012/11/20-12-st_beardtaxonomy/
- Turing_Machine 13y agoIt's been around for a long time. Think of the stereotypical medieval wizard or Greek philosopher. What does he always have? Bingo. For most of human existence, listening to the people with grey hair (male and female) was the most reliable way of learning how to survive. They'd been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale. It's only in recent history that things have started changing so fast that age==wisdom is no longer always true (though I think it still is more often true than some of the younger folks would like to believe). Edit: a previous poster mentioned Gandalf. The Gandalf character wouldn't work nearly as well if he had a nose ring and a bunch of trendy facial tats, right?
- xpda 13y ago"Learning obscure and strange languages, yields better understanding and broader horizons" does not, need a comma.
- Kabacaru 13y agoAutomate Everything/Automate at the First Sign of Resistance
- aerialcombat 13y agoDon't warn programmers because they will ignore them anyway.
- pjmorris 13y agoA rule of three: write it the first time, copy it the second time, extract it to a common routine the third time.
- notacoward 13y agoFor performance: measure once, cut twice.
- ryanolsonx 13y agoI love this one (saw it in one of the pull requests) "Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." --Brian Kernighan
- EdwardCoffin 13y agoJon Bentley [1] had a whole chapter in More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder [2], called Bumper-Sticker Computer Science, which was of this sort. There seems to be a copy of it online [3]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley [2] http://www.amazon.com/More-Programming-Pearls-Confessions-Coder/dp/0201118890 http://www.amazon.com/More-Programming-Pearls-Confessions-Co... [3] http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/bumper-sticker-computer-science http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/bumper-sticker-computer-...
- espeed 13y ago"A framework is an understanding of how things could fit together. When designing these things, it's important to remember that your understanding is incomplete."
- espeed 13y ago"It needs more hammock time", a la Rich Hickey's "Hammock Driven Development" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc).
- otterley 13y ago"Whatever can be done FOR you automatically can be done TO you automatically." --David Wyland
- espeed 13y agoSelections from Paul Graham's quotes page... "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." - Abelson & Sussman, SICP, preface to the first edition "That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted." - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture "Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay "Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve." - Alan Perlis "Premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - Donald Knuth "Lisp has jokingly been called "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer". I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavor of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts." - Edsger Dijkstra, CACM, 15:10 "The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases." - Jon Bentley and Doug McIlroy "Change breaks the brittle." - Jan Houtema "Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don't always know what for." - Jan Houtema "Focusing is about saying no." - Steve Jobs Source: http://paulgraham.com/quo.html http://paulgraham.com/quo.html
- espeed 13y agoSelections from Paul Graham's Lisp quotes page... "Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." - Philip Greenspun "Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material."- Alan Kay "The greatest single programming language ever designed" - Alan Kay, on Lisp "Lisp is a programmable programming language." - John Foderaro, CACM, September 1991 "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." - Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker" "Lisp is a programmer amplifier." - Martin Rodgers (first said by Chuck Moore about Forth) Most papers in computer science describe how their author learned what someone else already knew. - Peter Landin (This is a paraphrase. I'd appreciate it if anyone can tell me the exact quote. - pg) "The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it." - Kernighan and Ritchie "SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing." - Philip Greenspun "The continuation that obeys only obvious stack semantics, O grasshopper, is not the true continuation." - Guy Steele Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html http://www.paulgraham.com/quotes.html
- hughdbrown 13y agoAlways mount a scratch monkey. http://edp.org/monkey.htm http://edp.org/monkey.htm
- ColinDabritz 13y agoSimple isn't easy