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Top 50 Programming Quotes of All Time

- - 186 comments
I hope you have enjoyed our collection of funny computer quotes, Linux quotes, and all those quotes that we have shared with you so far. For today, I've decided to gather a good number of my all-time favorite programming-related quotes.


Most of the programming quotes I've collected are made by some of the famous names in the industry, while others came from not-so-famous people. Nevertheless, they are all witty so I hope you will find them fascinating and enlightening.

Without further delay, here are my top 50 programming quotes of all time:


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-Exupéry

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."
- Yoggi 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 McDonalds 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


If you have other interesting programming quotes to add, you may share them with us via comment.

186 comments

  1. The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9.
    -- Werner Trobin

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  2. As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
    -- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949")

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  3. Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an enormous amount of hard work. However, a certain amount of unpredictable and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference between adequacy and excellence.
    --(From the Unix "fortune" program.)

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  4. If carpenters built houses the way programmers build programs, the next wind to come along would destroy civilization.
    --Unknown

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  5. "MFen" here. You may want to quote my real name: Cory Dodt.

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  6. quote me...


    "Code is Life, Bugs is Sins..."

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  7. The latest new features in C++ are designed to fix the previously new features in C++

    David Jameson

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  8. Software wears out softly,Software development wears out the developers really hard.

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  9. From http://blogs.sitepoint.com/2009/11/12/google-closure-how-not-to-write-javascript/ :

    « In his talk on building JavaScript libraries, Dmitry [Baranovskiy, creator of the Raphaël JavaScript library for vectorial graphics ] compared JavaScript’s global scope to a public toilet. “You can’t avoid going in there,” he said. “But try to limit your contact with surfaces when you do.” »

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  10. "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil"
    Donald Knuth

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  11. The code is 100% complete, it just doesn't work yet.

    or

    The code is 100% complete, but it has not been tested.

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  12. Ruby is Perl on LSD

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  13. Programs, like ships, sink in the C.

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  14. The three C's of software engineering are Communication, Communication and Communication. Projects hardly ever fail due to technical problems.

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  15. "C.A.R Hoare, im happy for you and all, but Martin Golding had the best programming quote of all time.. of all time" - black guy who looks like a chipmink.

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  16. Functionality is an asset, but code is a liability. I will say this until you like it.
    Ted Dziuba

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  17. Can't code an if to save his life
    -- Don't remember

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  18. From nokogiri's README (http://nokogiri.org):
    XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.

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  19. Write your code like you will have to debug it when you are low on sleep, drunk, or hungover - because you probably will.

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  20. Sergio Orr: Self documenting code, by definition, always operates according to spec.

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  21. A working system implies just that the sum of all bugs is zero.

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  22. XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem then you're not using enough of it.

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  23. Two favorites of mine:
    "Brooks's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." --Fred Brooks)

    "Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems.'" --Jamie Zawinski

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  24. C combines the power of assembly language with the flexibility of assembly language.

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  25. 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.

    -- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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  26. If Microsoft had developed Internet, we could not ever see the source code of web pages. HTML might be a complied language then.

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  27. "The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one."

    JSON inventor, Douglas Crockford, on "reinventing" XML

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  28. The only thing you ever have to know is....
    what to do next.

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  29. "A good programmer looks both ways before crossing a one-way street."

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  30. Programming is like juggling; the problem is that the balls go where you throw them....

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  31. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that every good comment in a program represents a small failure of the language.

    - Charles Simonyi

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  32. Meh. The quintessential programming quote is this:

    "...THAT won't happen too often."

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  33. Fred Brooks said, "What one programmer can do in one month, two programmers can do in two months."

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  34. There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary, and those who are still waiting for the other 8 types !

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  35. I'd like to upvote Marko's comment ("We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil" -- Donald Knuth)

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  36. I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by.

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  37. http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/AiHasBeenSolved

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  38. 48, 40, 35, 33, 29, 26, 22, 13, 4, 3, 2, 1

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  39. If you can't write a good code, at least make it looks good. Bill Gates

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  40. C let's you easily shoot in your foot, C++ let's you reuse the bullet.

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  41. "The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you."


    Kenneth Thompson

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  42. Windows 9x: n. 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. -- Cygwin FAQ

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  43. I was surprised not to see Hofstadter's Law there: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law."

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  44. Good code is code that is easy to change.

    Code tends to change until it is no longer easy to change.

    All code becomes bad code.

    --Unknown

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  45. 9 pregnant women do not give you a baby per month, you'll still need 9 moths anyway.

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  46. "I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by." By Anonymous above is a mangled Douglas Adams quote!

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  47. I remember a quote from... I think a Linux book: "Bad comments are like bad sex. It may not be great, but it's better than nothing at all."

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  48. Sanity checks. Commentary by Otis B. Driftwood and Fiorello:

    D: It's all right. That's in every contract. That's what they call a sanity clause.
    ...
    F: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Claus.

    (From the Info-Zip source code)

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  49. Rule #1 of C program optimization: Don't do it.
    Rule #2 of C program optimization: DON'T DO IT!!!

    ReplyDelete
  50. Seth FlowersDecember 14, 2010

    Linux is only free if your time is worthless
    -cant remember

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  51. "You know, when you have a program that does something really cool, and you wrote it from scratch, and it took a significant part of your life, you grow fond of it. When it's finished, it feels like some kind of amorphous sculpture that you've created. It has an abstract shape in your head that's completely independent of its actual purpose. Elegant, simple, beautiful.

    Then, only a year later, after making dozens of pragmatic alterations to suit the people who use it, not only has your Venus-de-Milo lost both arms, she also has a giraffe's head sticking out of her chest and a cherubic penis that squirts colored water into a plastic bucket. The romance has become so painful that each day you struggle with an overwhelming urge to smash the fucking thing to pieces with a hammer."

    - Nick Foster ("Life as a programmer")

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  52. Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two similar parts into a subroutine - - open or closed. In this respect, software systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where repeated elements abound.
    -- Fred Brooks, Jr.

    Features are assets; Code is a liability.
    -- Paul Jensen

    If you want to win in a software business, just take on the hardest problem you can find, use the most powerful language you can get, and wait for your competitors' pointy-haired bosses to revert to the mean.
    -- Paul Graham

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  53. For those interested, I have compiled this fortunes in an strfile usable by the fortune command.

    You may find it at http://www.lifl.fr/~beaufils/pub/fortunes

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  54. One more I always admire is

    "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

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  55. Any program can be reduced by at least one instruction.
    All programs have at least 1 bug.
    Therefore, all programs can be reduced to a single instruction which does not work.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Another ...

    "To err is human, but to really foul things up, you need a computer."

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  57. From Nathaniel Borenstein (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Borenstein)

    "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."

    And my personal favorite:

    "The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in. We're computer professionals. We cause accidents."

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  58. re: if carpenters built houses ...

    It goes like this: If carpenters built houses the way programmers build programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. -- Jerry Weinberg (whose influence on many of us can never be overstated).

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  59. "Antoine de Saint-Exupéry", please correct the name

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  60. A programmer is a person who reasonably expects the first 90% of a project to take 90% of their time and the other 10% of the project to take the other 90% of their time

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  61. "Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity." – Dennis Ritchie

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  62. Software is never completed. It's only abandoned.

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  63. my best one,

    "there's no place like 127.0.0.1"

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  64. Before use a well be sure that it turn round !
    Me. Pierre M.

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  65. "Actually, the only truly intuitive interface is the nipple." - Jay Vollmer

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  66. "SOFTWARE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO PROGRAMMERS." -- Sidney Dijkstra

    See http://www.waysys.com/ws_content_al_isd.html

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  67. One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code.
    -Ken Thompson

    Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
    -Rob Pike

    Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous contribution to the software industry may be the degree to which it has lowered user expectations.
    -Esther Schindler

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  68. "Sometimes, things that should work, don't. That's worrying.
    Sometimes things that shouldn't work, do. That's worringer." - Notch

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  69. If you don't have time to do it right, you better have time to do it over.

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  70. "Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up, it is perfect."
    - Linus Torvalds (joke about developing Kernel)

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  71. Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
    -- Unknown

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  72. "A Computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can't program state machines."

    Alan Cox

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  73. The Bill Clinton quote is actually fake and comes from an ancient (in internet terms) April Fools joke, in which Clinton was going to ban the term "Software Engineer", see http://tab.computer.org/fase/fase-archive/v4/v4n08.txt and look closely at the congressional bill number.

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  74. keep it simple, stupid... Michael jackson. quoted from a sw development course from ocw.mit edu

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  75. "It links! Ship it!"

    -- Will Goddin

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  76. "Software is like sex. It's better when it's free." -- Linus Torvalds

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  77. "If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution."
    -- Robert Sewell

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  78. Here's two old bits of software development wisdom, not sure where they originated:
    "Any code older than a month was written by an idiot"

    "Working code is not bugfree code"

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  79. "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code"
    -Bill Harlan (from A Tirade Against the Cult of Performance)

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  80. If java had true garbage collection then most java programs will delete them-self upon execution.

    ReplyDelete
  81. "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

    Dijkstra

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  82. “Naturally, a tool for getting rid of bugs in your program is called a ‘debugger’. Mudanely enough, the corresponding tool for putting bugs into your program is called a ‘programmer’.”

    --Simon Cozens, from the book "Learning Perl"

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  83. "If C++ is the answer, what the (*censored*) was the question???"

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  84. I am still laughing for the first one .... lol :)

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  85. Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso

    Two things are infinite: the universe and the stupidity of mankind. However, I am not so sure yet with the universe. -- Albert Einstein

    To define recursion, we must first define recursion.

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  86. A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history with the possible exceptions of handguns and
    tequila. -Mitch Ratliffe, Technology Review.

    ReplyDelete
  87. A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history with the possible exceptions of handguns and
    tequila. -Mitch Ratliffe, Technology Review.

    ReplyDelete
  88. "No program is made of no code"

    -- Unknown

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  89. "All's well that ends." -- Unknown

    "We always include a few bugs so we can QA our QA people." -- Quoting a cow orker, not sure if it was original?

    "Computers do what you TELL them to do, not what you WANT them to do." --Unknown

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  90. If you like the above quotes...

    copy the above article, paste it to quotes.txt

    sed -e "s/^$/%/g" -e "s/^[0-9]*\.\ //g" < quotes.txt > /usr/share/games/fortunes/programmers

    and then add fortune to your .profile or something.

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  91. "Computers are like air conditioners: they stop working as soon as you open Windows"

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  92. "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day they start making vacuum cleaners."
    -- Ernst Jan Plugge

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  93. The gap between theory and practice is wider in practice than in theory...

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  94. "User" is a four-letter-word. - Me

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  95. From an old FedEx API promo:

    "If we wanted you to understand it, we wouldn't call it 'code'."

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  96. Nothing from _why? http://favstar.fm/users/_why

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  97. Parity is for farmers. -- S. Cray

    Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach. -- Brooks

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  98. Robert C. FangDecember 16, 2010

    I have a couple of things to say:

    1. You can never train a programmer, you may discover one.

    2. The human mind is not designed to do programming. It takes a good mind plus a brave heart to do programming well. You need to be smart enough to do it, but you need to be dumb enough to get it done.

    ReplyDelete
  99. // start comment
    "comment"
    // end comment

    not P@

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  100. Programming is like sex, one mistake and you will support it for life.

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  101. More programming quotes on http://www.SoftwareQuotes.com

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  102. Incorrect documentation is often worse than no documentation.
    - Bertrand Meyer

    And this I heard from a guy in my company his first day after being explained the system:
    New guy: - And where are the unitary tests?
    Veteran: - We don't do mistakes here

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  103. one of ma best is the following:

    I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code

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  104. "You may be 99.9% done with your program, but the last 0.1% takes the longest."

    -my Dad

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  105. "There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't."
    -Unknown

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  106. Just before you start debugging, remember to wear a helmet!

    God did great things in 6 days, and he's still debugging...

    Petar Kulic, Croatia, Split

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  107. The only good user is the one who doesn't know it is one...

    - myself -

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  108. i'm amazed you even try to hold water with a sieve.

    -my prof

    (in my defence... as bad as the code was, it worked)

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  109. Eric's quote doesn't rate being in the Top 50. The analogy doesn't work (art students don't study chemistry). His resume confirms he never took a single Comp Sci course at U of P, so has no direct basis for his claim. And some universities do teach more practical programming courses than theoretical ones. Obviously this topic is subjective, but I'm sorry, Eric's quote definitely isn't a top 50. You could probably find a Top 50 quote from him somewhere else, though.

    ReplyDelete
  110. To the person who wanted to correct the spelling of St. Antoine de Exupery's name: Don't you get it? This is all about programming, software and computers. Did you expect them to get it right the first time?

    ReplyDelete
  111. Famous LAst Words (F.LA.W.)
    "Go ahead and use it. We've got it working now!"

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  112. #51 "Why don't you guys get to work coding while we work on the requirements."

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  113. From Willy Wong's Harvey Mudd College 1981 yearbook page, in regards to mathematics and programming (he oft quoted this during our undergrad years): "Constants aren't. Variables won't."

    ReplyDelete
  114. i cannot programm,but i can hack to learn programming.

    ReplyDelete
  115. "The end of BASIC is just around the corner" (1977)
    "The end of BASIC is just around the corner" (1984)
    "The end of BASIC is just around the corner" (1998)
    "The end of BASIC is just around the corner" (2003)
    "The end of BASIC is just around the corner" (2007)

    ReplyDelete
  116. "Writing code a computer can understand is science. Writing code other programmers can understand is an art."
    - Jason Gorman, http://twitter.com/#!/jasongorman/status/24765422787

    ReplyDelete
  117. “Saying Java is good because it works on all operating systems is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders.”

    ReplyDelete
  118. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag tapes hurtling down the interstate
    -Andrew Tannenbaum

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  119. I'm a programmer. People seem to think I can fix their computer problems. I guess they never wonder where those problems came from.

    ReplyDelete
  120. "Steve Said,
    December 19, 2010 5:42 AM
    “Saying Java is good because it works on all operating systems is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders.”"

    You're right, thats not why it's good.

    ReplyDelete
  121. See also the quotes at http://lispers.org/

    ReplyDelete
  122. Just because they are called users it doesn't mean they are on drugs... although it would make more sense if they were.

    ReplyDelete
  123. A computer is a literal beast: it will do exactly what it thinks you told it to do. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily what you think you told it to do.

    ReplyDelete
  124. Do not comment your code. As soon as you enter a comment it is out of date and wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  125. Old Computers go into Museums, but old software goes into production every night.

    ReplyDelete
  126. While it is possible to write bad programs in any language, in C it is absolutely required. - Anon.

    ReplyDelete
  127. If it works, it's obsolete.

    Good, fast or cheap; pick any two.

    ReplyDelete
  128. Never overestimate the intelligence of a user and never underestimate their stupidity.

    ReplyDelete
  129. All's well that ends.

    ReplyDelete
  130. #26: "Yoggi Berra" should be "Yogi Berra."

    ReplyDelete
  131. "...I understand. But in the end we are not shipping your best effort, we are shipping a game"


    -Philippe Laurens

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  132. Software is finished when the last person stops using it.

    ReplyDelete
  133. There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

    Hardware, n.:
    The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

    The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.

    When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.

    Think of it this way: threads are like salt, not like pasta. You like salt, I like salt, we all like salt. But we eat more pasta.
    - Larry McVoy

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  134. The common language of programmers is Profanity.

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  135. Any idiot can program a computer. In fact, many do! - Me, an old programmer. And yes, I do realize that may be recursive.

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  136. Unix is user-friendly. It's just particular who its friends are.

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  137. Translated into Spanish on: http://labloguera.net/blogs/atorres/archive/2010/12/29/top-50-citas-de-programaci-n-de-todos-los-tiempos.aspx

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  138. "You are not expected to understand this."

    -- Unix 6th Edition Kernel Source Code Comment

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  139. My favorite line ever from any book on computer programming:

    "Constraints are not limitations; they are insight." (Sanderson, Pro ASP.NET MVC 2 Framework, p. 52)

    The context: "By failing to constrain a domain model along the same lines that a particular business in a particular industry operates, you are rejecting any real insight into its workings, and will struggle in the future to implement features that will seem to you like awkward special cases in your elegant metaworld."

    I can't even begin to recount how many awkward special cases there are in my elegant metaworlds.

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  140. That which CAN be configured MUST be configured.
    corr: Defaults aren't.

    It's a computer - Nothing takes only five minutes!

    - me.

    Comment in code from purchased company - in fact the ONLY comment in the code:

    "I have no idea why this works".

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  141. Hans PaijmansJanuary 01, 2011

    Like I used to tell my students back in the eighties "A program does not have to work, as long as it runs fast".

    Paai

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  142. Programs are perfect when used by the coder, but always fail when used by anyone else. How can they expect it to work with such diverse data!!

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  143. I hear this at our company once every couple months:

    "Wow. How did that ever work?"

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  144. "Behind every computer error there is at least two human errors, one of which is blaming the computer."

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  145. My two favorites (sorry for the bad english):

    1) Each and every problem can be solved with an extra level of indirection (unknown)

    2) A well designed class is a class which is easy to be used correctly and hard to be misused (Scott Meyers)

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  146. Can you test this? I'm shipping it this afternoon.

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  147. * "Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction — from which, by induction, it is evident that every program can be reduced to one instruction that does not work."

    * "First you listen to the users; then you ignore them."

    "Simplicity has real value on its own that makes the system more usable. It's the difference between reading a 100-page manual and reading a 500-page manual. It is more than five times the size."

    "Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something with it. (Actually, it can be emotionally fulfilling just to get the information. This is usually only true, however, if you have the social life of a kumquat.)"
    -Ken Arnold

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  148. We used to write of a lot of our support calls with a PEBKAC error. (Problem exists between keyboard and chair).

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  149. When c++ is your hammer, everything starts to look like your thumb.

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  150. A good programmer looks both ways before crossing a one-way street

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  151. "Linux is just a system of crutches and supports."
    "Not true! Linux is a neat system of crutches and supports!" (Anonymous; translated from Russian)

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  152. paraphrased from my JHU.edu education:

    By definition, software alone can't break. It may however fail to meet expectations or requirements. There aren't any software failures ... only requirements failures.

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  153. "Well...this is embarrassing" - me presenting an application.

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  154. "Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++?"
    - Richard O'Keefe

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  155. "Too many people have not given enough thought to initialization" - Robert L. Taber.

    "The most frequently heard words in a computer lab are, "**** it! *I* know what I mean!" - Ken Kerwin.

    "Stand back and ask yourself, 'Why?'" - Jerry Hodson

    "I'll have the crow sandwich, to go!" - Eric A. Lindberg.

    "Zilog memonics? Only Klingons use Zilog memonics!" - Robert L. Taber.

    There are 1 kind of people in the world. Those who number from 0, and those who do not.

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  156. AnonymousMay 03, 2011

    "If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, you shouldn't be doing it". - anon

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  157. AnonymousMay 31, 2011

    "Every use of a C preprocessor macro represents a failure of the programming language, the program design, or the programmer."

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  158. AnonymousMay 31, 2011

    "Hell is other people's code."
    -- anon

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  159. more inspiring quotes submitted by developers
    http://froz.net16.net

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  160. AnonymousJune 10, 2011

    Great quotes!

    Here's more Inspiring Quotes submitted by developers: http://froz.net16.net/Quotes

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  161. yep ... every "good" code becomes bad code eventually with all the modifications done later :)

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  162. AnonymousJuly 14, 2011

    "WordPress is the result of going out and getting drunk, then smoking some weed and finally coding for the rest of the night" - Me

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  163. AnonymousJuly 23, 2011

    The quote that talked about Egyptian pyramid is completely wrong about its structural integrity and how it was built!

    Btw, I enjoyed all the quotes except that stupid one. Thanks.

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  164. I loved every funny comment. We have a board of funny quotes.

    "None of us developers is as dumb as all of us."

    "Fragile development - the excessive use of band-aid fixes because no one has time for surgery.

    "The bad practice that we use that used to work but shouldn't have doesn't anymore."

    I'll see if I can find more.

    Jared
    http://www.rhyous.com

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  165. Wow reading those quotes is really a treat.
    Here is the one I would like to add :

    JAVA IS C++ WITHOUT THE GUNS, KNIVES, AND CLUBS" JAMES GOSLING

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  166. Some good quotes, but a lot I am not sure about.

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  167. COBOL - n But Grace, that will mean anyone can write programs.
    Stan Kelly-Bootle - The Devil's DP Dictionary


    Recursion - See recursion.
    An official IBM data processing terms dictionary, ca 1988

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  168. 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.

    My Favorite :D

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  169. tthe only problem with thinking outside the box is people tend to draw a circle around the box once they get out...

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  170. Old programmers dont die, they get lost in the processing...

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  171. "You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish." - tunefs(8) man page, 4.2BSD

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  172. My own debug insight, possibly original: "If the result doesn't make any sense, I'm not yet asking the right question". Not hilarious, but more helpful than swearing, (which I usually do first).

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  173. "If you get tired of writing for loops, take a break and continue later." -David Walker

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  174. AnonymousMay 15, 2012

    All programs contain at least one bug and one line of useless code. By fixing the bug and removing the useless line of code, you should be able to simplify any program to one line of useless code with a bug in it.

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  175. Awesome collection, loving it..

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  176. Algebraic loop: see Loop, Algebraic

    Loop, Algebraic: see Algebraic Loop

    (from the index of an early Simula manual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula)

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  177. AnonymousJuly 17, 2012

    On error :
    print "Success "

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  178. Nice read. It's nice to see the humility of the greats - compared to flamboyance of the average.

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  179. Excellent read, here's a quote based on Lord of the Rings

    "A day may come when the courage of devs fail, when we forsake our QA friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.
    An hour of bugs and shattered features, when the age of devs comes crashing down!
    But it is not this day! This day we RELEASE!"

    Enjoy

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  180. This is very interesting. It is wonderful collection...

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  181. If you have to choose writing for peoples and writing computer program, which one is harder ? Which one will you choose ?

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  182. But it works on my F***** Machine !!! :)

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  183. It's not a bug. It's an undocumented feature.
    Gameloft Coding Convention Manual.

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  184. Hard to argue with a list like that. We did list of programming quotes based on movies quotes. I think you will enjoy them.

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  185. its a mechanical problem, (there's a nut loose on the keyboard).

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