The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
Tom Cargill
Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Larry Wall
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Bill Gates
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
Once a new technology starts rolling, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
Stewart Brand
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut
The hardest part of design … is keeping features out.
Donald Norman
Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.
Ralph Johnson
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.
Edsger Dijkstra
Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.
Sam Redwine
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we’ve finished building it.
Anonymous Consultant
The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead.
Anonymous Support Group Member
Better train people and risk they leave – than do nothing and risk they stay.
Anonymous Technical Trainer
Programming is 10% science, 20% ingenuity, and 70% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.
Anonymous Scientist
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Anonymous Hack Actor
Bad code isn’t bad, its just misunderstood.
Anonymous Code Behaviorist
It is easier to measure something than to understand what you have measured.
Anonymous Analyst
The sooner you get behind in your work, the more time you have to catch up.
Anonymous Scheduler
When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.
Anonymous Linguist
Benchmarks don’t lie, but liars do benchmarks.
Anonymous Tester
Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?
Anonymous Code Monkey
Related posts:
44 Comments
Edsger Dijkstra’s quote is there twice, so is the “do it over” quote.
@Leif – Thanks for that. I guess I liked those quotes so much that I inadvertently added them twice.
Nice collection :)
I cannot remember where I read it, even after googling:
“The only feature you don’t debug is the one you don’t implement in the first place”
“life is just another example of bad programming”
One from Martin Fowler – “The opposite of a testable design is a detestable design”
I’m a programmer, and i want to change the world, but they just won’t give me the source code.
“measure twice, cut once” – steve mconnel
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.
(author unknown)
Great collection.
A bug always lies in the programmer eyes :)
User’s point of view: each and every feature of a program hardly achieved by a programmer is useless. The smallest con is an unsortable obstacle.
And maybe the surprisingly missing quote here: “A program is not perfect: no one has found its bugs yet.
“The only time I was wrong was when I thought I was wrong.”
If you think about it, Tom Cargill was a total moron. Logically his statement makes no sense. Nothing can consume 180 percent development time. I think what Tom wanted to say was that, 90 percent of code accounts for 10 percent of development time, and 10 percent of code accounts for 90 percent of development time. I know in my case, that I get away with murder because my peers have no clue what it takes to accomplish the tasks that I am given. Granted Ive become more managerial, but still, my development role takes little effort. Praise nerds!!
Now adam is the moron…
What about the good old one:
“God is Real, unless declared Integer”
this is my favorite quote
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
Tom Cargill
but this one has to be the funniest
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
Quality Engineers pride themselves on professional paranoia.
So true and well said!
But yet again, what would be programming if we did the code perfect the first time?
There would be no “lovely” debugging, or no thinking over and over the same thing, just to find a misplaced ;
Great blog, keep it up
Here is a new one.
“The quality of the code is independent of whether it works or not.” Jeff Esposito
Cheap, fast, reliable. Choose two.
“To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.”
I have no idea who coined that, but its definitely my favorite quote of all time.
I think there’s a mistake in the first one.
The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 10 percent of the development time…
“The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.”
I dont think there’s a mistake with this one, it actually means that u’ll go over time by 80 percent
“Removing the copy-paste function from all major IDEs would spare the humanity from 90% of all bugs in computer software.”
Can’ t remember where i read it. :/
And no, there is no mistake in the first one, it implies that software projects never finish on time therefore taking 180% time.
adam:
The time after the first 100% is when you’ve passed the first deadline.
My fave is the Larry Wall “three virtues” quote.
BTW Adam, you’ve totally missed the joke.
“Programming is like sex — one mistake and you end up supporting it for the rest of your life.”
Oh gods, don’t any of you understand that the 90% 90% quote means that you will always use more time than you planned?
People… Cargill’s quote is supposed to be funny, not a literal calculation of project time.
“A programmer spends 50% of his time fixing bugs, and the other 50% creating them.”
- Chris McGrath
Calvin, your recursion quote is my least favourite ;)
It makes me angry since it is clearly an example of an infinite loop rather than recursion.
Very nice. I love it. Just stumbleUpon it. I used to be a programmer now I dunno why I hate it. Please advise me how can I get back to coding program. I think my programming skill just suck big time after not having touched it for almost 3 years but I know that programming is such a headache. But it is actually a form of art with a creative mind blended together. To be brutal honest programming makes me so fustrated after all the debugging code when I used to be a newbie programmer.
If programmers would spend as much time programming as they do coming up with cleaver quotes… hmmm, I guess we’d still be in a mess. :)
God’s a great programmer, but a lousy debugger.
Great collection, personally i like this phase “Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.” as a programmer, i dont think this is totally ture but sometimes i do pray after implementation. LOL.
All the quotes are nice !
The art of programming is finding patterns where others see only chaos -Me
Really great collection!
I’m gonna share it with my colleagues.
Many of them are absolutely true.
Ciao!
>>BTW Adam, you’ve totally missed the joke.
You know why he is a manager now!!
>>Alejandro Alvarez wrote:
>>”But yet again, what would be programming if we did the code perfect the first time?
There would be no “lovely” debugging, or no thinking over and over the same thing, just to find a misplaced ;”
As a beginning programmer, I totally agree and identify with this…many is the time I’ve sat there thinking about why my code didn’t work, when I end up realizing there’s that errant little semicolon at the end of a line where it doesn’t belong.
>>Jan Wedekind wrote:
>>”Cheap, fast, reliable. Choose two.”
Actually, while this quote is mostly true, and quite hilarious, on a more serious note, ‘Cheap, Fast and Reliable,’ are actually three adjectives I could easily use to describe Ubuntu Linux. But then again, I’m in love with Linux for the same reasons I despise Win(blows): Security, browser speed and source code availability. ;-) Granted, not all my favorite Windows games and programs have been recreated or ported to Linux–Sims 2 for example, but by Goddess I ADORE open-source programming, so if I want to play Sims 2–I just go play it on Playstation 2. ;-)
“Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.” is a quote from me (Samuel T. Redwine, Jr.) made at the 4th International Software Process Workshop, Moretonhampstead, U.K., 11-13 May 1988 and printed in its Proceedings.
“I would love to change the world but they won’t give me the source code”
…well the source code is public, but it’s read only (write-protected).
Great collection.
good quotes
13 Trackbacks
[...] Favorite Programming Quotes If you can remember some of these quotes you can trot them out at the right time and seem better read than you really are [...]
From vBharat.com » Favorite Programming Quotes…
Favorite Programming Quotes: If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in….
[...] Favorite Programming Quotes The hardest part of design … is keeping features out. Donald Norman (tags: programming) [...]
[...] From a nice list of programming quotes. [...]
[...] http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2008/08/17/favorite-programming-quotes/ [...]
[...] Selected Computer Quotes (tags: toread programming geek humor software coding list nerd quotes) [...]
[...] sono un grande esperto di programazione, ma trovandomi su questo sito trovato con StumbleUpon non ho potuto fare ameno di notare queste fantastiche citazioni sulla [...]
[...] http://www.juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2008/08/17/favorite-programming-quotes/ [...]
[...] Ai ranh dich dum anh may cau nay nhe [...]
[...] and Tom Kyte didn’t disappoint. He had a rotating slide deck up as people filtered in, with a bunch of quotes (painfully true). He spent some time reminiscing about the Bad Old Days, with a bit of audience [...]
[...] The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead. [...]
[...] October 19th, 2008 in Quotes Better to train people and risk they leave – than do nothing and risk they stay. –anon [...]
[...] lot of programmers say a lot of things.. Quotes on Programming This entry was posted in Programming. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: [...]