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The software isn't finished until the last user is dead.

Anonymous

#dead #software #user #finished

Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.

Anonymous

From Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme

#language #programming #design #feature

A software mogul usually Bill Gates, but sometimes another makes a speech. If the automobile industry had developed like the software industry, the mogul proclaims, we would all be driving $25 cars that get 1,000 miles to the gallon. To which an automobile executive retorts, Yeah, and if cars were like software, they would crash twice a day for no reason, and when you called for service, they’d tell you to reinstall the engine.

Anonymous

#software #industry #engine

Why do we expect documentation to accurately describe the product when the documentation is finished first?

Anonymous

"understanding documentation..."

#documentation #product

Every large system that works started as a small system that worked.

Anonymous

You can't design and build a big system and expect it to work. You have to grow it from a smaller version that works.

#system #large

Organizations that design systems are constrained to produce copies of the communication structures of these organizations

Anonymous

Conway's Law Discussed in The Mythical Man-Month. Layered organizations produce software with layered architectures, etc. Conway's original formulation in 1968 was: If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a four-pass compiler

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks

ISBN: 0201835959 This book is available from Amazon

#organization #design #complexity

It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature.

Anonymous

#bug #feature #documentation

Real programmers ...
Don’t write specs. Users should be grateful for whatever they get. The are lucky to get any program at all.
Don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and even harder to modify.
Don’t read manuals. Reliance on a reference is a hallmark of the novice and the coward.

Anonymous

#programmer #specs #manual

A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place.

Anonymous

IEEE Grid newsmagazine

#programmer #person #problem

Requirements are like water. They're easier to build on when they're frozen.

Anonymous

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve C McConnell

ISBN: 1556154844 Page: 30 This book is available from Amazon

#requirement #build

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten.

Anonymous

Creating a Software Engineering Culture by Karl Eugene Wiegers

ISBN: 0932633331 Page: 189 This book is available from Amazon

There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.

Anonymous

MacUser in 1990

#production #history #project #mac

If the auto industry had done what the computer industry had done in the last thirty years, a Rolls Royce would cost $2.50 and get two million miles per gallon. - Herb Grosch

But it would be the size of a Dinky toy and crash every three days. Beware of false analogy. - Joe Celko

Anonymous

The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM) by Ken Henderson

ISBN: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL Page: 85 This book is available from Amazon

Computers are to computing as instruments are to music. Software is the score, whose interpretation amplifies our reach and lifts our spirit. Leonardo da Vinci called music 'the shaping of the invisible,' and his phrase is even more apt as a description of software. As in the case of music, the invisibility of software is no more mysterious than where your lap goes when you stand up...

Anonymous

A thorough software professional is one who when his wife yells at him "goto hell" , worries more about the goto statement than what his wife is upset about.

Anonymous

And the users exclaimed with a laugh and a taunt: It's just what we asked for but not what we want.

Anonymous

Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work. Practice is when something works, but you don't know why. Programmers combine theory and practice: Nothing works and they don't know why.

Anonymous

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Anonymous

Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O.

Anonymous

Programmers are in a race with the Universe to create bigger and better idiot-proof programs, while the Universe is trying to create bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning.

Anonymous

Old programmers never die. They just can't C as well.

Anonymous

f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmmng.

Anonymous

Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night.

Anonymous

A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.

Anonymous

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

Anonymous

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer, you will find at least two human errors, one of which is the error of blaming it on the computer.

Anonymous

Bad code isn't bad, its just misunderstood.

Anonymous

Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever.

Anonymous

Programs for sale: Fast, Reliable, Cheap: choose 2.

Anonymous

Ready, fire, aim (the fast approach to software development). Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim ... (the slow approach to software development).

Anonymous

Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning.

Anonymous

Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?

Anonymous

100 bad programmers will never finish. 1 excellent programmers will eventually.

Anonymous

Finish the project - we will buy you a new family.

Anonymous

There is bad lazy and there is good lazy.

Anonymous

posted by MTri at: http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=42260 To illustrate the difference, a bad lazy programmer sits on his a$ all day and does nothing where as a good lazy programmer takes advantage of structured programming, OOP, patterns, etc, etc to build code that is efficient, reusable, easy to read and debug. This type of person may not seem lazy at first glance but in reality is saving him or herself hours of grief in the long term.

Shut up and code

Anonymous

Notice on the office wall of an industrial software manager, 1970 [October 6, 1994]

Make a user interface as consistent and as predictable as possible.

Anonymous

[The Principle of Least Astonishment] (User Interfaces) Contributed by several readers

Humans are the best value in computers -- where else can you get a non-linear computer weighing only about 160lbs, having a billion binary decision elements, that can be mass-produced by unskilled labour?

Anonymous

#computer

Any significant boost in technology could just as easily be a rigged demo.

Anonymous

They said Galileo was a fool. They said Einstein was a fool. They said the Wright Brothers were fools. What you've got to remember, however, is that they also said that about a lot of fools.

Anonymous

[T]he phrase "debugging a computer" was coined in 1947 when Harvard researchers found a moth crushed between the jaws of a relay switch in a Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. The dead moth was taped to the machine's logbook, which now resides at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. Whenever the machine broke down, which was often, operators would quip that they were "debugging" it.

Anonymous

Wired News article

Let the programmers be many and the managers few - then all will be productive.

Anonymous

Spoke the master programmer.

There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Anonymous

Very good professional programmers are ten times as productive as poor ones.

Anonymous

Sackman, Erikson, and Grant

Projects must meet the needs of customers and users in order to be successful. It is possible to meet budget and time goals but still be unsuccessful if customer needs have not been met.

Anonymous

From Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) Team Model for Application Development.

The goal of product management is customer satisfaction. The product management role is positioned to achieve this by acting as the customer advocate to the team and as the team advocate to the customer. It is important to distinguish between the customer and the end user—the customer is the one who pays for the product while the end user is the one who uses the product.

Anonymous

From MSF Team Model for Application Development.

The role and focus of program management is to meet the quality goal of delivering the product within project constraints. To meet this goal, program management owns and drives the schedule, the features, and the budget for the project. Program management ensures that the right product is delivered at the right time.

Anonymous

From MSF Team Model for Application Development.

Development estimates its own scheduling because it works daily with all developmental contingency factors. MSF refers to this concept as bottom-up estimating. Its goal is to achieve a higher quality of schedule and to increase accountability of the estimates and of the work.

Anonymous

From MSF Team Model for Application Development.

The testing role must be able to clearly articulate what is currently wrong with the product and what is currently right with it so that the status of product development is accurately portrayed. To do this, testing must have a very good grasp of the needs of the users and a clear understanding of what the product will do to meet those needs.

Anonymous

From MSF Team Model for Application Development.

In fact, MSF advocates the creation of project identities so that team members see themselves less as individuals and more as members of a project team. One technique Microsoft uses to accomplish this is to give projects code names.

Anonymous

Hungarian notation is the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques.

Anonymous

But it's working as coded!

Anonymous

in an attempt to justify some bad code. When I am asked for progress on whatever I'm developing, I sometimes say in a serious voice, "It's working as coded", it's amazing how many people are happy with that.

My favourite quote comes from Larry Ellison when Oracle was just starting. He would go around to the clients, promise them vaporware, and then force the programmers to ship seriously buggy code, which kept on crashing with dire consequences.
On one of the occasions when he was phoning back to headquarters from the road one of the developers asked him how many people had asked for their money bacK.
"Oh, nobody's asked for their money back yet" he replied. "A few have asked for their data back though!"

Anonymous

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.

Anonymous

Software, good software, is not built by individuals. It is built by teams. To do this, the teams must possess shared values, principles, and practices.

Anonymous

It is the nature of developers that they delight in automation. We naturally automate parts of our manual testing as testing becomes cumbersome. Fully automated test suites is the natural extension of this tendency.

Anonymous

Code is an executable model.

Anonymous

XP is the answer to the question, 'How little can we do and still build great software?'

Anonymous

Align authority and responsibility.

Anonymous

Code has three functions:
1. It must behave properly.

2. It must accept change without undue costs.

3. It must clearly express its function to its readers.

If it fails any of these, it is broken and needs to be fixed.

Anonymous

Uncle Bob

C++ is like teenage sex:
It's on everyone's mind all the time.

Everyone talks about it all the time.

Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it.

Almost no one is really doing it.

The few who are doing it are doing it poorly;

sure it will be better next time;

not practicing it safely.

Anonymous

toilet graffito at the Technion CS department in Haifa, Israel, 1993-11-08 [ornate PS version]

Developers prefer to use agile methods. Mangagers prefer to use heavy methods.

Anonymous

2000 IT mangaers: 67% agreed

#agile #method #manager

Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.

Anonymous

You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.

Anonymous

#funny #work #program

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

Anonymous

A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.

Anonymous

Computer interfaces and user interfaces are as different as night and 1.

Anonymous

We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.

Anonymous

Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.

Anonymous

Programming is 10% science, 25% ingenuity and 65% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.

Anonymous

DEBUGGING : Removing the needles from the haystack.

Anonymous

The Wizardry Compiled by Rick Cook

After 15 years of research, Robert Zawacki reported that about 60 percent of a developer’s productivity comes from the match up between the job and the person. For best productivity, developers must be assigned to jobs they find stimulating

Anonymous

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction by Steve C McConnell

ISBN: 1556154844 This book is available from Amazon

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, responding to change over following a planþ

Anonymous

Agile Software Development Manifesto

#agile #manifesto #tool #documentation #customer #work

...the primary purpose of a programming language is to help the programmer in the practice of his art.

Anonymous

If the code doesn't bother you, don't bother it.

Anonymous

#funny #code #fix

..the difference between coding and design is greater in the coding phase than it is in design.

Anonymous

Make sure that yo think along the lines of "I want to do X...hmmm...must learn Y" rather than "I only know P so I can only do Q".

Anonymous

Similarities between Prostitution and Programming: - 1. In both careers, you're washed up at age 40 unless you move into management.

-2. In both careers, you get paid to be on your rear.

-3. In both careers you get your best work done at night when everyone else is out of the office.

-4. After a certain age you need "technical support"

-5. Difficult to estimate how long the job will take

-6. Vast skill difference between contractors

-7. Hard to check references

-8. Your friends don't understand how you can do what you do.

-9. You might have to kiss some ass

-10. The more unpleasant the work, the higher the pay

-11. The customer pays a lot of money for you time but the big part of it usually goes to your boss/pimp.

-12. Many programmers are willing to do it without pay just because they love it.

Anonymous

If the code is poor quality, have it fixed, don't paper over the problem.

Anonymous

God is real unless declared an integer.

Anonymous

We believe the open source model is the most effective form of development for certain types of software. By pooling expertise with the open source development community, we expect to improve the quality, performance, and feature set of our software.

Anonymous

Apple Open Source FAQ

Don't just think of 3 solutions, think of 3 good things about each one and three problems. If you can not think of three for every solution, you do not really understand.

Anonymous

Don't document the obvious!

Anonymous

Programming software is a constant fight.

Anonymous

Since I started programming I make as much errors in real life as I make in my source code.

Anonymous

If you don't know how to do something, you don't know how to do it with a computer.

Anonymous

If you have a procedure with ten parameters, you probably missed some.

Anonymous

Out of sight, out of mind.

Anonymous

Don't keep doing what doesn't work.

Anonymous

The job's not over until the paperwork's done.

Anonymous

[The Maintainer's Motto] If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.

Anonymous

No one cares if you can back up; only if you can restore.

Anonymous

Which means spending a lot of time regularly to check you are indeed backing up all the necessary data, and you know how to restore them, since each application requires a specific procedure.

Alyosha`s Law: software is never "done" - only occasionally shipped, and then eventually abandoned

Anonymous

And alpha is simply that you want somebody to share your pain!

Anonymous

If you don't like unit testing your product, most likely your customers won't like to test it either.

Anonymous

Don't just fix the mistakes -- fix whatever permitted the mistake in the first place.

Anonymous

One of NASA rules for better software.

The way the process works, it not only finds errors in the software. The process finds errors in the process.

Anonymous

One of NASA rules for better software.

Even though this was not critical we went back and asked what other lines of code might have exactly the same kind of problem.

Anonymous

One of NASA rules for better software.

Re-use before you buy before you build.

Anonymous

This is an object-oriented system. If we change anything, the users object.

Anonymous

I learned in Law School that, unlike in programming, a double negative does not necessarily equal the positive.

Anonymous

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.

Anonymous

IBM maintenance manual, 1925

Hofstadter's Law - It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account .

Anonymous

"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" page 152

#Hofstadter #law

Remember, only two industries refer to their customers as users.

Anonymous

There are only 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Anonymous

Saying Java is the best because it runs on multiple platforms is like saying anal sex is best because it works with either sex.

Anonymous

Two things that drive us, software development addicts: enthusiasm and laziness....

Anonymous

#software #development #lazy

I don't need to test my programs. I have an error-correcting modem.

Anonymous

#test #modem

I'm a rock star where I work, but in a proper software development shop I'd be no more than a roadie.

Anonymous

We did about 10,000 tests on it, and it was working fine until Monday.

Anonymous

Spokesperson for 7-11 after Y2K-related failure of their credit card processing on 2001-01-01

#Y2K #failure

Good programmers write code for humans first and computers next.

Anonymous

Performance is a feature. Design up front with performance in mind. Have performance plan in the very beginning.

Anonymous

There exists no "improve performance" checkbox.

Anonymous

When you spend time to find & fix all the bugs in your project, you can't complete the project in your life time.

Anonymous

Ignore some bugs

#bug #project #time

Lots of methodologies have come and gone, paradigms have changed but the requirements are always the same; Make it good and make it fast.

Anonymous

Computing is becoming a utility -- we're past the gold rush days, and like any other 'utility' the name of the game is getting the reliability/quality up and the costs down. We need to make the entire development process more robust at less cost in order to compete and survive.

Anonymous

#computing #development #process

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must be a software developer," says the balloonist.

"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's of no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must work in business as a manager." "I do," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met but now it's my fault."

Anonymous

Many corporate programmers never get beyond looking at the source code as their basis of understanding business functions and how programs work. These programmers are, I believe, doomed never to understand vast amounts of important business functions or program code, because it is difficult to learn that way. They can't see the business function because when they are looking at the details in the code, they are looking at details that are rarely, if ever, executed. These programmers typically spend their programming careers bored and unhappy because they are focused on support of a tiny part of the corporate business function.

Anonymous

The first rule of debugging - the bug's always in your code, not the compiler.

Anonymous

Better train people and risk they leave – than do nothing and risk they stay.

Anonymous

Using exceptions to control the flow of a program is like using a small tonne of dynamite to light a toddler's birthday candle.

Anonymous

Real Programmers don't drive clapped-out Mavericks. They prefer BMW's, Lincolns, or pick up trucks with floor shifts. Fast motorcycles are highly regarded.

Anonymous

No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.

Anonymous

Turkish proverb

Blame doesn't fix bugs.

Anonymous

Blame doesn't fix bugs. Instead of pointing fingers, point to possible solutions. It's the positive outcome that counts.

Anonymous

Many eyes makes bug shallow.

Anonymous

Companies that excel in usability can boost their return on "usability" investment more than 100-to-1.

Anonymous

Randolph Bias co-wrote the book Cost Justifying Usability

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Anonymous

Amara's Law. This was put forth by Roy Amara of the Institute for the Future. It is sometimes called Saffo's law or Clarke's law.

If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.

Anonymous

Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value.

Anonymous

Found in a Linux fortunes file.

Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.

Anonymous

Found in a Linux fortunes file.

We'd better start coding right away because we're going to have a lot of debugging to do.

Anonymous

- Any Typical Programming Manager Used as an example development philosophy in Code Complete, Chapter 3: Prerequisites to Construction.

A prime group is the main element group of a processing level that must be present in order for that processing level to exist for a particular transaction.

Anonymous

From an Acord AL3 Manual This is from the definitions section.

If there is no IE connectivity, the initial mailbox data can still be supplied. It is not expected that ECS-only installations will occur for some time, however the same routines coupled with a new Base Configuration will permit continued hands-free setup.

Anonymous

From an IBM software user's manual The manual has pages and pages like this, with no explanation of the acronyms, and indeed no explanation of what the software actually does.

There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.

Anonymous

Flon's Law

#languages

Anything you need to quantify can be measured in some way that is superior to not measuring it at all.

Anonymous

Gilb's Law

Peopleware : Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Ed. by Tom Demarco, Timothy R. Lister

ISBN: 0932633439 This book is available from Amazon

Projects without clear goals will not achieve their goals clearly.

Anonymous

- Gilb's Principle of Fuzzy Targets. As quoted in Software Metrics: A Rigorous and Practical Approach, page 10.

Hindsight is an exact science.

Anonymous

Proverb - Found in a Linux fortunes file.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will use it.

Anonymous

Proverb - Found on a jokes Web site.

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with the software.

Anonymous

Proverb - Found on a jokes Web site.

With enough practice, any interface is intuitive.

Anonymous

Proverb

You are making progress if each mistake is a new one.

Anonymous

Proverb

If you can tell good advice from bad advice, you don't need any advice.

Anonymous

Proverb

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

Anonymous

Hofstadter's Law

Anonymous

IEEE Grid news magazine

It is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.

Anonymous

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation As quoted by Douglas Adams

The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: Management.

Anonymous

The Dilbert Principle As stated by Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle.

Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you.

Anonymous

Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans. Quoted by Fredrick Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month, as an example of another profession which takes time to produce first-rate results.

It is faster to make a four-inch mirror then a six-inch mirror than to make a six-inch mirror.

Anonymous

Thompson's Rule for First-Time Telescope Makers From More Programming Pearls: Confessions Of A Coder.

Variables won't; constants aren't.

Anonymous

Osborn's Law

If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.

Anonymous

Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia

A good workman is known by his tools.

Anonymous

The proverb is proverbial, of course. The application of the proverb to programming comes from The Mythical Man-Month, Essay 12: Sharp Tools.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Anonymous

Proverb. The point being that you should get more tools. Metaphorically, that is.

Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

Anonymous

Proverbial. This one has often been applied to maintenance programming.

#fix

Floods are just God's way of reminding people not to build on the flood plains.

Anonymous

#people

Don't keep doing what doesn't work.

Anonymous

Just because you've counted all the trees doesn't mean you've seen the forest.

Anonymous

Intel giveth, and Microsoft taketh away.

Anonymous

Consulting: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made by prolonging the problem.

Anonymous

Programming Proverb From wikiquote.org.

#consulting #money #problem #solution

Any program that runs right is obsolete.

Anonymous

Programming Proverb From wikiquote.org.

Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English.

Anonymous

Programming Proverb

#programmer

God is real, unless declared integer.

Anonymous

Programming Proverb. Found in a Linux fortunes file. It's a joke. If you don't understand it, you might want to learn more Fortran.

#funny

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.

Anonymous

Ogden's Law

#time

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Anonymous

Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Anonymous

#code #programmer #proverb #Linux

Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them.

Anonymous

Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction - from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.

Anonymous

The computing field is always in need of new cliches.

Anonymous

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.

Anonymous

I would rather write programs that help me write programs than write programs.

Anonymous

From Gerald Weinberg's "Understanding the Professional Programmer", What Are the Paradigms for a Professional Programmer?, page 15 in the paperback printing.

The Principle of Least Astonishment: Make a user interface as consistent and as predictable as possible.

Anonymous

From More Programming Pearls: Confessions Of A Coder.

It may be the early bird that gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Anonymous

It has often happened in the software world, as in Visicalc vs. Lotus 123, etc

Practice is the best of all instructors.

Anonymous

Publilus

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks

ISBN: 0201835959 This book is available from Amazon

#pactice

The biggest and longest-lasting changes usually originate in attempts to preserve the very thing that ultimately changes most.

Anonymous

Romer's Rule. As quoted in Gerald Weinberg's "Understanding the Professional Programmer", What a Programmer Needs in Order to Change, page 67 in the paperback printing.

Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.

Anonymous

Poor Richard's Almanac

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks

ISBN: 0201835959 This book is available from Amazon

Take your initial estimate, multiply by a thousand, and divide by the number of weeks you've been in the computer field. In other words, after about twenty years your estimates tend to be approximately correct.

Anonymous

Nelson's Rule of Estimating From Computer Lib, 1987 printing, page 41.

Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.

Anonymous

Mitchell's Law of Committees

#problem #meeting

When you break the problem into parts you've determined its structure, and the work that will be done around it, forever.

Anonymous

Mark Miller's Law of Irrevocable Subdivision As quoted in Computer Lib, 1987 printing, page 40.

#problem

If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.

Anonymous

Lieutenant Colonel Walt Weir Quoted in More Programming Pearls, Column 6: Bumper-Sticker Computer Science. This is 'The Maintainer's Motto'.

Linux Torvalds once told me that Linux was like a flood that rises at a rate that you don't see if you're staring at it, but will surprise you if you haven't been paying attention. That's exactly what's happening.

Anonymous

If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there.

Anonymous

#goto

Wexelblat's Scheduling Algorithm:

Choose two:

Good

Fast

Cheap

Anonymous

Your problem is another's solution; Your solution will be his problem.

Anonymous

If you've found 3 bugs in a program, best estimate is that there are 3 more.

Anonymous

60% of product cost comes after initial shipment.

Anonymous

#cost

Your problem is another's solution; Your solution will be his problem.

Anonymous

#problem #solution

If something is worth doing once, it's worth building a tool to do it.

Anonymous

Don't test bugs out, design them out.

Anonymous

Don't patch bugs out, rewrite them out.

Anonymous

Design first, then code.

Anonymous

#design

Discipline is the best tool.

Anonymous

#tool

The Six Phases of a Project:
- Enthusiasm
- Disillusionment
- Panic
- Search for the Guilty
- Punishment of the Innocent -Praise for non-participants

Anonymous

No matter how slick (efficient) the demo is in rehearsal, When you do it in front of a live audience The probability of a flawless presentation Is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, Raised to the power of the amount of money involved.

Anonymous

Great coders solve problems. Great team make history.

Anonymous

Ad for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Your potential. Our passion.

Anonymous

Ad for Microsoft Visual Studio.

All software expands until it includes an email interface.

Anonymous

If you don't have a good system, make sure you get good users.

Anonymous

#user #system #bad

3 Biggest Software Lies:
- The program's fully tested and bug-free.
- We're working on the documentation.
- Of course we can modify it.

Anonymous

#documentation #bug-free #bug #test #software #lies

Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code.

Anonymous

#code #tools #programmer

Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn't leave something that can be traced back to you.

Anonymous

#sex #hacking

A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.

Anonymous

Greer's Third Law

#computer #program #law

A SQL query walks into a bar. He approaches two tables and says, "Mind if I join you?"

Anonymous

#funny #sql #query #tables

Too many errors on one line (make fewer).

Anonymous

Compiler message you don't want to see.

#error #message

Software developers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

Anonymous

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

Anonymous

Drug dealers:
Refer to their clients as "users".
"The first one's free!"
Have important South-East Asian connections (to help move the stuff).
Strange jargon: "Stick", "Rock", "Dime bag," "E".
Realize that there's tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market.
Job is assisted by industry's producing newer, more potent mixes.
Often seen in the company of pimps and hustlers.
Their product causes unhealthy addictions.
Do your job well, and you can sleep with sexy movie stars who depend on you.

Software developers:
Refer to their clients as "users".
"Download a free trial version..."
Have important South-East Asian connections (to help debug the code).
Strange jargon: "SCSI", "ISDN", "Java", "RTFM"
Realize that there's tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market.
Job is assisted by industry's producing newer, faster machines.
Often seen in the company of marketing people and venture capitalists.
Their product causes unhealthy addictions - DOOM. Quake. SimCity. Duke Nukem 3D.
Damn! Damn! DAMN!!!

Anonymous

#funny

The hardest part of design... is keeping features out.

Anonymous

#design #feature

It's not undermaintained, it's feature-complete.

Anonymous

Cabal

Fast, good, cheap: pick any two.

Anonymous

#funny

A hard problem is seldom worth solving.

Anonymous

Meaning that if it seems hard you should spend time making it simple: either by understanding it better, by rephrasing it or by limiting (or extending) the scope.

There's some truth to that. When I first started programming, I thought the more clever I was the better. I worked at minimizing the lines of code and using as many tricks as I could just to show how clever I was. Then I tried going back to some of that code and tried to understand it. It would sometimes take me longer to make sense of it than it had taken me originally to write it. Now I strive for clarity. I use explicit variable names and will sometimes add a line of code if I think it makes my intention more clear. Then I add sufficient comments so that I can immediately understand the intent when reviewing the code. I only use "tricks" when no other method will suffice and then I add extra comments, like breadcrumbs so I can find my way back through my original logic.

Anonymous

If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.

Anonymous

Alan Perlis's Epigrams on Programming.

I went to school to learn how to program software applications, which inevitably have bug defects. There was no course at my university on testing, debugging, profiling, or optimization. These things you have to learn on your own, usually in a tight deadline.

Anonymous

The sooner we start coding fewer frameworks and more programs the sooner we’ll become better programmers.

Anonymous

3 Biggest Software Lies:
- The program's fully tested and bug-free.
- We're working on the documentation.
- Of course we can modify it."

Anonymous

#bug-free #documentation #program

If you don't have a good system, make sure you get good users.

Anonymous

#funny

Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code.

Anonymous

#funny

Hacking is like sex. You get in, you get out, and hope that you didn't leave something that can be traced back to you.

Anonymous

#funny

A computer program does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.

Anonymous

Greer's Third Law

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.

Anonymous

Since customer service and innovations are increasingly important competitive weapons, it doesn’t pay to create a sullen, dispirited or burned out work force. Some ways to turn down the heat:
1. Don’t let work turn into an endurance contest
2. Be flexible in work hours
3. Ask people how to restructure the work
4. Keep punishing hours (overtime) reserved for crises, not part of the standard drill.

Anonymous

O’Reilly, Fortune Magazine, March 12, 1990

Before committing the design of a complex system be sure solutions are available for the basic technical problems that limit the system; leadership in [software] engineering requires understanding basic technical processes; and a good [software] engineer personally validates the analysis [in a prototype].

Anonymous

Elmendorf commenting on Friis’s Seventy-Five Years in an Exciting World.

Whatsoever a great leader does, the same is done by others as well. Whatever standard the leader sets, the team (and then the world) follows.

Anonymous

Written in the Epic Period of the Bahagavad-Gita, Chapter 3, paragraph 21

#Leadership #project #management

The issue seems to be somewhere between the keyboard and the chair.

Anonymous

In theory it does not work and we know why.
In practice it works but we don’t know why.
We developers put theory in to practice, It does not work and we don’t know why.

Anonymous

The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

Anonymous

Fast. Good. Cheap. Choose any two.

Anonymous

One of the benefits of object-oriented languages is that you can upgrade pieces of a program without rewriting the rest of it.

Anonymous

Java Swing, O'Reilly ISBN 1-56592-455-X

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.

Anonymous

In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?

Anonymous

#jokes

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

Anonymous

Everything will ultimately fail. Hardware is fallible, so we add redundancy. This allows us to survive individuals hardware failures, but increases the likelihood of having at least one failure at any given time.

Anonymous

Women are like Internet domain names. –The good ones are always taken. –But you can always get one from a strange country.

Anonymous

#domain #internet

It isn't a question of whether you document your software or not - it's a question of whether you do it with a specification and design, or with reams and reams of logs files.

Anonymous

A programmer’s wife sends him to the grocery store with the instructions, “get a loaf of bread, and if they have eggs, get a dozen.” He comes home with a dozen loaf of bread and tells her, “they had eggs."

Anonymous

#jokes

A programmers wife sends him to the store and says: "Get some bread, and while you're there pick up some eggs". The programmer never came back.

Anonymous

#jokes

To understand recursion you must first understand recursion.

Anonymous

The difficulty of a bug can be measured as the distance, in lines of code, from the cause of a bug to the visible symptom of a bug.

Anonymous

The Klophaus Equation of Bug Difficulty

Programming is breaking of one big impossible task into several very small possible tasks.

Anonymous

A programmer does not primarily write code; rather, he primarily writes to another programmer about his problem solution. The understanding of this fact is the final step in his maturation as technician.

Anonymous

#programmers

A person without data is just another person with an opinion.

Anonymous

#metrics #data #management

As a Lead JavaScript Engineer, I try to get my team to write as little JavaScript as possible.

Anonymous

#javascript

Sure I could program in PHP, but I could also use a sundial to tell time.

Anonymous

#php

Features, quality, time: pick two.

Anonymous

#specification #estimating

XML is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.

Anonymous

#xml

Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders.

Anonymous

#java

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.

Anonymous

#programmers

Law 1: Every program can be optimised to be smaller. Law 2: There's always one more bug. Corollary: Every program can be reduced to a one-line bug.

Anonymous

#bugs #optimization

Good programming is 99% sweat and 1% coffee.

Anonymous

#programming

Ready, fire, aim: the fast approach to software development. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim: the slow approach to software development.

Anonymous

#programming

In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

Anonymous

#functions

The adjustment period from solo programming to collaborative programming was like eating a hot pepper. The first time you try it, you may not like it because you are not used to it. However the more you eat it, the more you like it.

Anonymous

#pair programming #extreme programming

It works on my machine.

Anonymous

#deploying

The difference between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice.

Anonymous

#theory

Never trust a programmer in a suit.

Anonymous

#programmers

Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't work. Practice is when something works, but you don't know why. Programmers combine theory and practice: Nothing works and they don't know why.

Anonymous

#programmers

Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming.

Anonymous

#optimization

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.

Anonymous

#programmers

Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.

Anonymous

#programmers

Programmer — an organism that turns coffee into software.

Anonymous

#programmers

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

Anonymous

#programmers

Beta. Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it's released. Beta is Latin for “still doesn't work”.

Anonymous

#beta

It's not a bug — it's an undocumented feature.

Anonymous

#bugs

Software and cathedrals are much the same — first we build them, then we pray.

Anonymous

#softwares

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

Anonymous

#specification #planning

Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.

Anonymous

#bugs

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.

Anonymous

#debugging #bugs

We build systems like the Wright brothers built airplanes — build the whole thing, push it off the cliff, let it crash, and start over again.

Anonymous

Nato Software Engineering Conference '68

#softwares

In the end, regardless of where you are on the development hierarchy, keep coding. It’s where you’re most valuable.

Anonymous

The Developer's Code

#programming

Security is a state of mind.

Anonymous

NSA Security Manual

#security

Well-designed components are easy to replace. Eventually, they will be replaced by ones that are not so easy to replace.

Anonymous

Sustrik's Law

#complexity

When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.

Anonymous

Why The Lucky Stiff

#creativity

Code is like humor. When you have to explain it, it’s bad.

Anonymous

Cory House

#complexity

The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.

Anonymous

Cunningham's Law

#programmers

Feature-based releases expand to fill all available time until someone feels guilty for not finishing the feature on a magical, wish-fulfillment schedule, and hey, has it been a couple of years already?

Anonymous

chromatic

#features #releasing #planning

Users who want critical bug fixes and new features without actually upgrading their software also want magic flying candy-dropping ponies.

Anonymous

chromatic

#features #users

Machines should work. People should think.

Anonymous

IBM Pollyanna Principle

#computers

A good API is not just easy to use but also hard to misuse.

Anonymous

JBD

#api

Later equals never.

Anonymous

Le Blanc's law

#estimating

Anything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong.

Anonymous

Murphy's Law

#debugging

You broke the build!

Anonymous

Agnes

#deploying #version-control

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