| |
| Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations…. They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them "operators" or "programmers." ~ Peter F. Drucker |
| Programmer – an organism that turns coffee into software. ~ Author Unknown |
| Programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. ~ Michael Sinz |
| All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. ~ Author Unknown |
| Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. ~ Martin Golding |
| Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you are as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? ~ Brian Kernighan |
| Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday’s code. ~ Dan Salomon |
| [A]nd 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 |
| Another effective technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind, I see what’s wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor. ~ Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike |
| A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. ~ Doug Linder |
|
| All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. ~ Frederick Brooks |
| Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. ~ Martin Fowler |
| Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. ~ Rich Kulawiec |
| Beta. Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it’s released. Beta is Latin for "still doesn’t work." ~ Author Unknown |
| Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. ~ Brian Kernighan |
| Don’t argue with people who write with digital ink and pay by the kilowatt-hour. ~ Don Rittner |
| From a programmer’s point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request. ~ Peter Williams |
| At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly equivalent to herding cats. ~ The Washington Post Magazine |
| It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature. ~ Author Unknown |
| Version 1 of any software is full of bugs. Version 2 fixes all the bugs and is great. Version 3 adds all the things users ask for, but hides all the great stuff in Version 2. ~ Fred Blechman |
| Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time. ~ N.J. Rubenking |
| Good code is its own best documentation. As you’re about to add a comment, ask yourself, "How can I improve the code so that this comment isn’t needed?" ~ Steve McConnell |
| Great software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty. If you look inside good software, you find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too. I’m not claiming I write great software, but I know that when it comes to code I behave in a way that would make me eligible for prescription drugs if I approached everyday life the same way. It drives me crazy to see code that’s badly indented, or that uses ugly variable names. ~ Paul Graham |
I really hate this darn machine;
I wish that they would sell it.
It won’t do what I want it to,
but only what I tell it.
~ Author Unknown |
| One man’s crappy software is another man’s full time job. ~ Jessica Gaston |
| He who hasn’t hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does so as an adult has no brain. ~ John Moore |
| If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. ~ Author Unknown |
| If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, e.g., with no external memory aids, you are not ready to code it. ~ Richard Pattis |
| It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. ~ Nathaniel S. Borenstein |
| It’s easy to cry "bug" when the truth is that you’ve got a complex system and sometimes it takes a while to get all the components to co-exist peacefully. ~ Doug Vargas |