PROGRAMMERS - We could all use a good laugh

[Bill]

Top 50 Programming Quotes


50. "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs,
and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the
universe is winning." - Rick Cook

49. "Lisp isn't a language -- it's a building material." - Alan Kay

48. "Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy
if both are frozen." - Edward V. Berard

47. "They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." - Olav Mjelde

46. "A programming language is low level when its programs require attention
to the irrelevant." - Alan J. Perlis

45. "A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people
carrying razors." - Waldi Ravens

44. "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

43. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any
more than studying brushes and
pigment can make somebody an expert painter." - Eric S. Raymond

42. "Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out
of a job." - Mosher's Law of Software Engineering

41. "I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory
listing." - Oktal

40. "Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language
should be like. But Java applications
are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like." - pixadel

39. "Considering the current sad state of our computer programs, software
development is clearly still a black art,
and cannot yet be called an engineering discipline." - Bill Clinton

38. "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be
regarded as a criminal offense."
- E.W. Dijkstra

37. "In the one and only true way, the object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti
code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'
(too many layers)." - Roberto Waltman

36. "FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed; it is hardy, occasionally blooms,
and grows in every computer."
- Alan J. Perlis

35. "For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading
edge, could be so useless. And then it
occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to
do incredibly smart things, while computer
programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid
things. They are, in short, a perfect match."
- Bill Bryson

34. "In my egotistical opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt."
- Blair P. Houghton

33. "When someone says: 'I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done,' give him a
lollipop." - Alan J. Perlis

32. "The evolution of languages: FORTRAN is a non-typed language. C is a
weakly typed language. Ada is a strongly
typed language. C++ is a strongly hyped language." - Ron Sercely

31. "Good design adds value faster than it adds cost." - Thomas C. Gale

30. "Python's a drop-in replacement for BASIC in the sense that Optimus
Prime is a drop-in replacement for a truck."
- Cory Dodt

29. "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." - Linus Torvalds

28. "Perfection [in design] is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing left to take
away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupry

27. "C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." - Dennis M. Ritchie

26. "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're
not." - Yogi Berra

25. "You can't have great software without a great team, and most software
teams behave like dysfunctional families."
- Jim McCarthy

24. "PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs,
whereas Perl is a great and insidious
evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals." - Jon
Ribbens

23. "Programming is like kicking yourself in the face: sooner or later your
nose will bleed." - Kyle Woodbury

22. "Perl -- the only language that looks the same before and after RSA
encryption." - Keith Bostic

21. "It is easier to port a shell than a shell script." - Larry Wall

20. "I invented the term 'Object-Oriented,' and I can tell you I did not
have C++ in mind." - Alan Kay

19. "Learning to program has no more to do with designing interactive
software than learning to touch type has to do
with writing poetry" - Ted Nelson

18. "The best programmers are not marginally better than merely good ones.
They are an order-of-magnitude better,
measured by whatever standard: conceptual creativity, speed, ingenuity
of design, or problem-solving ability."
- Randall E. Stross

17. "If McDonald's were run like a software company, one out of every
hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning,
and the response would be, 'We're sorry; here's a coupon for two
more.'" - Mark Minasi

16. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it." - Donald E. Knuth

15. "Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous
damage, but you cannot ensure success."
- Tom DeMarco

14. "I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your
machine!" - Vidiu Platon

13. "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the
rest of the week debugging Monday's code."
- Christopher Thompson

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

11. "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 W. Kernighan

10. "People think that computer science is the art of geniuses, but the
actual reality is the opposite, just many
people doing things that build on each other, like a wall of mini
stones." - Donald Knuth

9. "First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a
programming style. Then forget all that and just
hack." - George Carrette

8. "Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are
three, of course: laziness, impatience, and
hubris." - Larry Wall

7. "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions
of bricks piled on top of each other,
with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands
of slaves." - Alan Kay

6. "The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a
programmer is doing until it's too late."
- Seymour Cray

5. "To iterate is human, to recurse divine." - L. Peter Deutsch

4. "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament]: 'Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine
wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to
apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage

3. "Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid
or get adulation by the public, but
because it is fun to program." - Linus Torvalds

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

1. "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." - C.A.R. Hoare

 

[John W. Vinson]

Top 50 Programming Quotes

Excellent! Saved for future reference.

"The last good thing written in C was Schubert's Ninth Symphony."

<someone's .sig>
--

John W. Vinson [MVP]
Microsoft's replacements for these newsgroups:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/
and see also http://www.utteraccess.com

 

[Bill]

AMEN John!

Excellent! Saved for future reference.

"The last good thing written in C was Schubert's Ninth Symphony."

<someone's .sig>
--

John W. Vinson [MVP]
Microsoft's replacements for these newsgroups:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/
and see also http://www.utteraccess.com

 

[Stuart McCall]

Excellent! Saved for future reference.

Likewise.

When an inexperienced programmer looks at a problem for the first time, the
reaction is typically, Gee, that's not too complicated. If the programming
solution is based upon that initial insight, the solution is likely to be
incompetent, because it is rarely that simple. The more experienced
programmer continues the analysis and thought process and realizes that it
is much more complicated. If the programming solution is based upon that
considered insight, the solution will be competent but not dazzling. The
great programmer keeps looking at the problem until a different viewpoint is
visible that makes it all simple again. If the programming solution is
based upon that insight, it has a chance to be truly great.

 

[Mike Painter]

40. "Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language
should be like. But Java applications
are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like." -
pixadel

Java, the P-system of the 90's

If AT&T had Pick, thre would be no Unix.

You only think you know spagetti code if you have not done MUMPS.

(That includes early BASIC code when there was no lower case, 4k RAM and
spaces counted as a Byte. YOULEARNEDTOREADCODELIKETHIS)

 

[mbyerley]

Java, the P-system of the 90's

If AT&T had Pick, thre would be no Unix.

You only think you know spagetti code if you have not done MUMPS.

(That includes early BASIC code when there was no lower case, 4k RAM and
spaces counted as a Byte. YOULEARNEDTOREADCODELIKETHIS)
ouch...

 

[Bill]

Well, for all you youngsters, let me tell you about spaghetti code
from the "olden days" of the IBM 7090 and early IBM 360.

In those days, we had at best, Fortran II for applications and
assembler language for the systems code, all on punched cards
of course. (The IBM 1401 had a language called AutoCoder,
one that I managed to avoid.)

Since speed and space were of major consideration at all times,
we had code that I was "sentenced to support" that handled all
of its own I/O. So we had code that would do something like
put up a READ instruction that included a comment to the effect:
"I now have 58 micro-seconds before I have to reset and load
the channel". Then, counting the execution cycle speed of each
instruction that followed, the code would then in fact reset and
load the channel, rather than issue a timer instruction to wait
following the READ. (Tape drives were connected to control units
that were in turn connected to the computer's channel controllers
where the code could exchange sense data and stream data
from the device.)

Anyway, as code like that described above progressed, one
could likely expect roughly 10% of the code were assembler
instructions the equivalent of "Go To".

One last thought about the early days of Fortran. (One would
laboriously punch up a few hundred punched cards only to have
some nitwit drop the deck while loading it into the batch reader.
At least we had card sorters that used sequence numbers in
columns 73-80 to put the deck back together, assuming one
had the foresight to have the deck sequenced.) Anyway, after
waiting a few hours for a batch turnaround, one would get
back the compilation listing with messages like "Not done 6",
meaning that the compiler found an error "somewhere" in the
code and then quit at that point. We got pretty good at
memorizing the meaning of the "codes" which ranged from 1
to the mid-50's I think. Then, subsequent compilations would
find "the next" error if there were any.

Clearly, a whole different world today.........thank the Lord.

Bill
P.S. You can only imagine the stories to be told regarding
memory (RAM) and storage capacities.

 

[Mike Painter]

You had punched cards!
I started on an IBM 1620 with tape I/O and FORTRAN with format, teh first
version that did not require assewmbly language I/O routines.
The compiler was also on mylar backed paper tape and we dropped the reel one
day and spent hours rewinding it.

But it was my first PC. I coulsd check out a key and have the machine all to
myself all night long.

 

[Bill]

Mike,
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only "old timer" that subscribes
to this forum.

When I was at the Lawrence Radiation Lab at Berkeley, we
had a IBM 1620 down on campus, but I never had the pleasure
of "Mylar backed paper tape"!!! How much fun that must have
been.

Cheers,
Bill

 

[Access Developer]

I never had the pleasure of "Mylar backed
paper tape"!!! How much fun that must have
been.

Long ago and far away, before I became a computer programmer, I was a part
programmer creating tapes to operate numerically controlled milling machines
(this was the very, very early days of NC). We had a Kearney & Trecker
profile mill, with a Bendix control that used punched tape.

However on the factory production floor, paper tape wouldn't hold up for
long, so we used a tape that was a mylar-aluminum foil-mylar "sandwich".
The trouble was that most of the "paper" tape punches were not heavy duty
enough, so the machines were often out of order while a new die plate or new
punches were being installed.

Fortunately, we had some very skillful toolmakers, who, once they heard
about our problem, recreated the die plate and punches in some exotic, very
tough metals -- as long as we used those punches for the final tape prep, we
didn't have any more problems.

Larry

 

[David-W-Fenton]

Fortunately, we had some very skillful toolmakers, who, once they
heard about our problem, recreated the die plate and punches in
some exotic, very tough metals -- as long as we used those punches
for the final tape prep, we didn't have any more problems.

That's a different definition for the word "hardware!"