Programming quotations

12/1/2009 2:32 PM EST

My favorite is one by Einstein:

"A good theory is made as simple as possible.
But no more so."

12/2/2009 12:57 AM EST

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away"

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

12/2/2009 7:37 AM EST

“Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.”

Scott Adams

12/2/2009 1:10 PM EST

I think you doubled up on
"If the code and the comments disagree, both are probably wrong."
:)

12/2/2009 2:20 PM EST

"Give the laziest man the hardest job, he'll find the easiest way of getting it done."
- Anton Martin Sorenson -

"A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering."
- Freeman Dyson -

"Beware of the software engineer carrying a screwdriver"
- XTALK -

12/2/2009 4:13 PM EST

"Trying to understand how a program works by looking at the code is like trying to understand how a jet airplane works by looking at the wiring."
- Jack Crack -

12/3/2009 12:29 AM EST

Software Companies are like maternity homes - full of deliveries - only difference - more abortions & prematured deliveries here.

12/3/2009 3:07 AM EST

The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take. --Roy Carls.

Corollary: The later u start 2 code, the sooner u'll know that it'll not complete.

12/3/2009 5:51 AM EST

“We can teach an artist to animate; we cannot take the time or expend the effort to teach him to be an artist” –Chuck Jones (1989)

An obvious metaphor for the type of programmers that you should employ. I also love daffy duck.

12/3/2009 8:13 AM EST

"The key to happiness is low expectations."

I use this on my boss all the time.

12/3/2009 9:33 AM EST

“"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop”

Lewis Carroll (author, "Alice in Wonderland")

12/3/2009 9:33 AM EST

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Lewis Carroll (author, "Alice in Wonderland")

12/3/2009 10:02 AM EST

I'm not a UI guy, but:

"The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."

--Bruce Ediger (I think)

12/3/2009 11:35 AM EST

Thanks, milamber. We removed the extra quotation.

12/3/2009 11:44 AM EST

Top 5 Engineering Quotes from "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams

5) Now logic is a wonderful thing but it has, as the processes of evolution discovered, certain drawbacks. Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else, which thinks at least as logically as it does.

4) Reverse engineering. To me the flow of time is irrelevant. You decide what you want. I then merely make sure that it has already happened.

3) It wasn't his job to worry about that, though. It was his job to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain narrowness of vision and circularity of thought then it wasn't his job to worry about such things.

2) The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

1) A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

12/3/2009 1:37 PM EST

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. – Niels Bohr

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. - Niels Bohr

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. - John Kenneth Galbraith

12/3/2009 1:47 PM EST

There is no detail so small that it shouldn't be checked out.

-Kossuth

12/3/2009 3:00 PM EST

It's always darkest just before it goes totally black.

No engineering project is ever finished, it is merely abandoned.

12/3/2009 6:08 PM EST

"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

Ray Keefe
Successful Endeavours
http://www.successful.com.au

12/3/2009 7:00 PM EST

Newton's three laws of software:
1. Software once in motion, remains in motion until external forces (economic limits etc) are applied to stop it.
2. F = ma, F = number of bugs, m = mass of software (number of lines of code), a = rate of change of software.
3. For every bug fixed, there is an equally bad one created due to the fix.

12/10/2009 1:27 AM EST

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade"
-Rabindranath Tagore

12/10/2009 6:25 PM EST

Thanks.

12/11/2009 1:12 PM EST

"A 1200 baud telephone line is no match for the bandwidth of a pickup truck loaded with reels of magnetic tape shuttling between campuses" -- Dr. Fred Brooks, from a lecture on what went right with IBM System 360 and his telecommunications experience at Research Triangle Park.

12/14/2009 10:35 PM EST

Here is one of mine:

Software has an infinite capacity to cripple good hardware.

12/15/2009 6:06 PM EST

"Walking on water and writing software to specification are easy as long as both are frozen." - Edward V. Berard

NJ

12/16/2009 11:53 AM EST

They make things so sophisticated that they don’t work.

12/17/2009 1:50 PM EST

The project specs are dark and deep,
But my boss says his promise I must keep,
With lines to code before I sleep,
With lines to code before I sleep.
- Adapted from Robert Frost by Andrew Miner

12/21/2009 8:57 PM EST

There are no rules of architecture for castles in the air.
-- G. K. Chesterton

12/23/2009 11:40 AM EST

"Find the bug, Fix the bug, Do it many times" - Erkki Salonen, Nokia Quality Award 2005 / SW category

12/28/2009 7:50 PM EST

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that quote from Richard Feynman came from when he was one of the investigators into the Challenger disaster (demonstrating the frozen O-rings).

What is elegant code?

Elegant code makes it obvious that it is the perfect and simplest solution to a problem. If this is not the case, then it is not elegant.

Needless to say, I have not seen, nor written much elegant code in my lifetime so far.

1/4/2010 7:52 PM EST

This is one I post in my work area:
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Henry Ford

1/8/2010 6:51 PM EST

Any program has at least one remaining bug and can be optimized to reduce the size by at least one byte. Thus, any program can be reduced to one byte. And it won't work.

Unknown.

1/30/2010 9:44 PM EST

"I can't think of anything I haven't thought of." - Thomas P. (when asked why he skipped reviewing his requirements doc with the customer)

3/6/2010 12:08 AM EST

My professor says this....

A worst doctor can kill a person...but a worst engineer can kill millions...!!!
-- Dr. Brad Noble, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

3/25/2010 5:48 PM EDT

There are only two reasons to learn a computer language:
1) It changes the way you think
2) someone pays you to write a program
- bandit's rule of languages
(inspired by Pat Orr)

There cannot be good engineering without conflict
- Liddell's rule of engineering