(j3.2006) [Fwd: Fw: TOP 50 PROGRAMMING QUOTES plus a few more]

[Van Snyder]

Some hilarious software humor from our favorite RAID inventor. 
I recommend starting bottom up at #1 at end.... 

- Robert

A few more:
A. 90% of the code is written in 80% of the schedule.  The next 9% takes
another 80%.  The next 0.9% takes another 80%.

B. A program is 'complete' when management thinks they can ship and not
be fired. 

C.  The bugs are in 1% of the code.  The problem is finding the 1%.

D. When you are behind schedule, adding resources makes you further
behind.   (The mytical man-month - Brooks)

E.  A user will find a bug in 5 minutes that a tester could not uncover
in a week.  Users will do what no sane person would do.

F.  Engineering is like football and bound by physical reality
Programming is like chess and bound only by the power of the mind  
================================================================================================================

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




                   

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