Favorite Programming Quote

[Brandon_R]

Post your favorite programming quote.

It would be nice if you guys posted some that applied to xenForo like this one:


"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." -Edsger Dijkstra

 

[Danny.VBT]

"In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion."

 

[Nick]

“The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple.” (Grady Booch)

 

[Kier]

"What the f*** was I thinking when I wrote this line of code???" - Kier

 

[Enigma]

Here's one to make you think

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." —Brian Kernighan.

Other good ones here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58640/great-programming-quotes

 

[Wired]

Naaahhh, I don't need a backup copy of this code before I make this teeny tiny change... /power goes out
Oh ****...

 

[Shamil]

"Why the heck did I do that? I could have used eval() and it would have worked the first time round." Alex (a dev working with me on an intranet project)

 

[Andy Huang]

"This code is awesome, but what was it supposed to do again?" -- Me, Looking at code I wrote after waking up from coding all day, all night and all morning on energy drink

 

[Kevin]

"What the f*** was I thinking when I wrote this line of code???" - Kier

"This code is awesome, but what was it supposed to do again?" -- Me, Looking at code I wrote after waking up from coding all day, all night and all morning on energy drink

Ah, I sense some kindred spirits around here. Those two quotes above often will come up when I look at code I wrote some time ago and need to revisit.

 

[mlx]

Oh yeah. Looking at really old code you have written yourself can be pretty shocking from time to time. Kinda glad I'm not alone there

 

[Ben Davis]

I normally hang my head in a mixture of shame and horror when I look at my old code rofl

 

[Steffi]

"What the f*** was I thinking when I wrote this line of code???" - Kier

You just take my quote, lol, but I just say it in German.

 

[Kevin]

Oh yeah. Looking at really old code you have written yourself can be pretty shocking from time to time. Kinda glad I'm not alone there

I normally hang my head in a mixture of shame and horror when I look at my old code rofl

The worst feeling is when you are in a programmer team environment and after you start with the "Who the heck wrote this?!' rant, you realize... "Um, uh... yeah, I think that's some of my code. Never mind." Whoops.

 

[Brandon_R]

"Simplicity is a dish best served elegantly."

 

[SneakyDave]

"It can be developed to do that, but you're not going to like the results"

"I'm not talking about a pool cue" - some ancient instructor.

"Read a file, write a record, and specify the target you want to open, but not close. Doing so will insult the compiler's intelligence" - some other ancient instructor.

 

[Dean]

what does rm * do? I'll just try that out...

 

[mlx]

what does rm * do? I'll just try that out...

You should give "rm -rf /" logged in as root a try ... it's awesome

 

[Enigma]

@mlx (because I don't want to quote the message).

I think it is poor form to potentially encourage someone to run a malicious and extremely damaging command, even if you do so in jest (yes, I see the smilie). Perhaps I'm overreacting, but my opinion can be summed up with the announcement at this link:

http://ubuntuforums.org/announcement.php?f=331

 

[mlx]

Geez, it's a joke and this is NOT a support thread.

Sorry if people don't get it.