Notable Programming Quotes

• Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
• Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
• 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.
• The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.
• Linux is only free if your time has no value.
• It works on my machine.
• 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.
• If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
• A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
• The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late.
• Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
• 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.
• With regard to adding more programmers to get a project done faster…Nine people can’t make a baby in a month.
• A programmer started to cuss
• Because getting to sleep was a fuss
• As he lay there in bed
• Looping ’round in his head
• was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;
• Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning.
• You can stand on the shoulders of giants OR a big enough pile of dwarfs, works either way.
• Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
• An idiot with a computer is a faster, better idiot
• We better hurry up and start coding, there are going to be a lot of bugs to fix.
• 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.
• Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren’t doing anything. One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them. Very often they’re sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.
• I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
• Never trust a programmer with a screw driver.

→ 13 readers