Nice Software Quotes

 UNIX is simple. But It just needs a genius to
 understand its
 simplicity.
  --Dennis Ritchie
 
 
  Good judgement comes from experience, and
 experience comes from bad
  judgement.
  --Fred Brooks
 
 
 
  Theory is when you know something, but it doesn't
 work. Practice is
 when
  something works, but you don't know why it works.
 Programmers combine
 theory
  and practice: Nothing works and they don't know
 why.
 
 
 
  It's hard enough to find an error in your code
 when you're looking for
 it;
  it's even harder when you've assumed your code is
 error-free.
   -Steve McConnell Code Complete
 
 
 
  If builders built buildings the way programmers
 wrote programs, then
 the
  first woodpecker that came along would destroy
 civilisation.
   -Gerald Weinberg
 
 
 
  The Six Phases of a Project:
          Enthusiasm
          Disillusionment
          Panic
         Search for the Guilty
         Punishment of the Innocent
         Praise for non-participants
 
 
 
  Good code is its own best documentation. As you're
 about to add a
 comment,
  ask yourself, 'How can I improve the code so that
 this comment isn't
  needed?' Improve the code and then document it to
 make it even
 clearer.
  --Steve McConnell Code Complete
 
 
  The trouble with the world is that the stupid are
 cocksure and the
  intelligent are full of doubt.
  --Bertrand Russell
 
 
 
  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.
 
 
 
  One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman
 Empire was that,
 lacking
  zero, they had no way to indicate successful
 termination of their C
  programs.
  --Robert Firth
 
 
 
  Fifty years of programming language research, and
 we end up with C++?
  --Richard A. O'Keefe
 
 
 
  C programmers never die. They are just cast into
 void.
 
  If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then
 programming must be
 the
  process of putting them in.
  --Edsger Dijkstra
 
 
  You can either have software quality or you can
 have pointer
 arithmetic,
 but
  you cannot have both at the same time.
 
  --(Bertrand Meyer)
 
 
 
  There are two ways to write error-free programs;
 only the third works.
  --Alan J. Perlis
 
 
  Measuring programming progress by lines of code is
 like measuring
 aircraft
  building progress by weight.
  --Bill Gates
 
 
 
  Before software can be reusable, it first has to
 be usable.
  --Ralph Johnson
 
 
 
  The first 90% of the code accounts for the first
 90% of the
 development
  time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for
 the other 90% of the
  development time.
  --Tom Cargill
 
 
 
  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.
  --Anon
 
 
 
  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 discovers debugging, 1949
 
 
 
  I did say something along the lines of "C makes it
 easy to shoot
 yourself
 in
  the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it
 blows your whole
 leg
  off."
  --Bjarne Stroustrup
 
 
 
  It has been said that the great scientific
 disciplines are examples of

  giants standing on the shoulders of other giants.
 It has also been
 said
 that
  the software industry is an example of midgets
 standing on the toes of
 other
  midgets.
  --Alan Cooper About Face
 
 
 
  Computers are useless. They can only give you
 answers.
  --Pablo Picasso
 
 
 
 
  If the code and the comments disagree, then both
 are probably wrong.
  --attributed to Norm Schryer
 
 
 
  Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run
 over if you just sit

  there.
  --Will Rogers
 
 
 
  Einstein argued that there must be simplified
 explanations of nature,
  because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No
 such faith comforts the
  software engineer.
  --Fred Brooks, Jr.
 
 
 
   As we said in the preface to the first edition, C
 "wears well as
 one's
  experience with it grows." With a decade more
 experience, we still
 feel
 that
  way.
  --Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
 
 
 
  Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability
  --Edsger W.Dijkstra
 
 
 
  I've finally learned what "upward compatible"
 means. It means we get
 to
 keep
  all our old mistakes.
  --Dennie van Tassel
  (P.S : just like revision changes for hardware or
 new version release
 for
  software)
 
 
 
  Rules of Optimization:
      Rule 1: Don't do it.
      Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet.
 
      --M.A. Jackson
 
 
 
  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
 
 
   Every program has (at least) two purposes: the
 one for which it was
  written, and another for which it wasn't.
  --Alan J. Perlis
 
 
  Technology is dominated by two types of people:
 Those who understand
 what
  they do not manage. Those who manage what they do
 not understand.
  --Putt's Law
 
 
  Copy and paste is a design error
  --David Parnas
 
 
  Any code of your own that you haven't looked at
 for six or more months
 might
  as well have been written by someone else.
  --Eagleson's law
 
 
  The primary duty of an exception handler is to get
 the error out of
 the
 lap
  of the programmer and into the surprised face of
 the user. Provided
 you
 keep
  this cardinal rule in mind, you can't go far
 wrong.
  --Verity Stob