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Real Programmers don't write specs -- users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and take what they get... Don't order a drink for the road, because the road is already laid out Flip Wilson Crayne's law: All computers wait at the same speed. Ill play with it first and tell you what it is later. MILES DAVIS Some years ago, when COBOL was the great white programming hope, one heard much talk of the possibility of executives being able to read programs ... nobody can seriously have believed [this] ... even programmers do not read programs. -Weinberg, p.5 I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. LUCINDA CHILDS (PHILIP GLASS: EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH) Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand... If you can fly this plane 600 miles per hour in the dark and find Los Angeles... you can find my bags! Geraldean Wilson Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. HASSAN I SABBAH Dont let your mouth write no check that your tail cant cash. BO DIDDLEY The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. NIELS BOHR Just because everything is different doesnt mean anything has changed. SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ORACLE The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H P LOVECRAFT What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick. Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics. "Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought." - Albert Szent-Gyorgi - I write all my critical routines in assembler, and my comedy routines in FORTRAN. -Anonymous "Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals" - "Oh, Lucky Man" - I really hate this damn machine, I wish that they would sell it. It never does just what I want, But only what I tell it. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. -Edsel Murphy, dec. "Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels" - Goya - Asking for efficiency and adaptibility in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife ... we'll probably have to settle for one or the other. -Weinberg, p.22 It seems intuitively clear that the existence of an error in a program will not be reflected in the test result unless the program component in error is executed during the test. -J.C. Huang, 'Program Instrumentation and Software Testing', Computer, Volume II Number 4 "Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it" - Gordon R. Dickson - "Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor." - Toynbee - Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies, and Szechwan food. Take what you can use and let the rest go by. KEN KESEY There are ... programs that should be thrown away before ever being used. -Weinberg, p.20 Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves. LITTLE RICHARD If a programmer is found to be indispensable, the best thing to do is to get rid of him as quickly as possible. -The Psychology of Computer Programming, Gerald M. Weinberg, (Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1971) I never loved another person the way I loved myself. MAE WEST Putting a bunch of people to work on the same problem doesn't make them a team. -Weinberg, p.35 Real Programmers' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working in only a few 30-hour debugging sessions. The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important Milo Bloom I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. J EDGAR HOOVER I love Susie and she loves me.. I tryed to screw her in a hollow tree the tree split...she shit... and all i got was a little bit.. THE DUCK Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies... Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. SIGMUND FREUD Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications programmers... If the programmer is working in a language that allows only three dimensions, we are not likely to observe more than three. -Weinberg, p.31 When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one Ive never tried before. MAE WEST Her life was saved by rock and roll. LOU REED It's not whether you win or lose, it's how good you look playing! David Lee Roth Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9 AM, it's because they were up all night. Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeprody I would never had lit one. MAXIM OF THE HELLS ANGELS It is a rather pleasent experience to be alone in a bank at night. WILLIE SUTTON The systems designer suffer[s] because the better his system does its job, the less its users know of its existence. -Weinberg, p.124 Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting. BILLY ROSE The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. KARL MARX If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it ... it would have been much better. KARL MARX'S MOTHER To detect errors, the programmer must have a conniving mind, one that delights in uncovering flaws where beauty and perfection were once thought to lie. -Weinberg, p.136 When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality. AL CAPONE For locating errors, however, we want a person who has the persistence of a mother-in-law and the collecting instincts of a pack rat. -Weinberg, p.136 Anything anybody can say about America is true. EMMETT GROGAN Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. BUCKMINSTER FULLER Another effect [of not having a spoken form] is the difficulty with which we can talk about a programming language without a blackboard or pencil and paper. Every programming office should have a blackboard, chalk, and many erasers. -Weinberg, p.207 Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER You smash it - and Ill build around it. JOHN LENNON College isnt the place to go for ideas. HELLEN KELLER 'Programming' - like 'loving' - is a single word that encompasses an infinitude of activities. -Weinberg, p.121 Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. ARTHUR C CLARKE America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? ALLEN GINSBERG It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody. RICHARD M NIXON The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. -Albert Einstein Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearence of magic. ARTHUR C CLARKE Programming shares with prayer the feature of directional transmission and broadcast reception. -Weinberg, p.207 Better to have wrestled and lost than played basketball! -Sysop If the poor workman hates his tools, the good workman hates poor tools. The work of the workingman is, in a sense, defined by his tools. -Weinberg, p.203 No craftsman, if he aspires to the highest work in his profession, will accept [inferior] tools; and no employer, if he appreciates the quality of work, will ask a craftsman to accept them. -Weinberg, p.204 He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return. SOUTH AFRICAN SAYING Use it up ... Wear it out. Make it do ... Or do without. US WORLD WAR II MESSAGE You cant underestimate the power of fear. TRICIA NIXON The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak. WAVY GRAVY Justice is incedental to law and order. J EDGAR HOOVER Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. GROUCHO MARX The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. ABBIE HOFFMAN ... in some terminal systems ... the user can keep his program from being pushed down in the priority stack by fiddling with the shift key while he is thinking. -Weinberg, p.209 Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old. PINK FLOYD Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still dont know what I want to be when I grow up. PETER DRUCKER I could prove God statistically. GEORGE GALLUP My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. ALBERT EINSTEIN When a programmer has a difficult time finding a bug, it is because he is looking in the wrong place. -Weinberg, p.251 Real wealth can only increase. R BUCKMINSTER FULLER Anyone can hate. it costs to love. JOHN WILLIAMSON In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. JOHN LILLY How can you be two places at once when youre not anywhere at all? FIRESIGN THEATER The expert is a person who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. -Anonymous I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. OSCAR WILDE We are what we pretend to be. KURT VONNEGUT, JR We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. OSCAR WILDE The nature of programming being what it is, there is no relationship between the 'size' of the error and the problems it causes. -Weinberg, p.247 The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but thats the way to bet. DAMON RUNYON Documentation is the castor oil of programming ... the managers know it must be good because programmers hate it so much. -Weinberg, p.262 Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space. GRAFFITI The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. ALBERT EINSTEIN Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. TALLULAH BANKHEAD The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten per cent of its capacity - the rest is overhead for the operating system. -Anonymous A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms. GEORGE WALD Dont lose Your head To gain a minute You need your head Your brains are in it. BURMA SHAVE We stand at the brink of a new age, an age made possible by the revolution that is embodied in the computer. Standing on the brink, we could totter either way - to a golden age of liberty or a dark age of tyranny, either of which would surpass anything the world has ever known. Perhaps no individual's efforts will make any difference in the result, but we must never cease trying, for then the result is sure to be tyranny. -Weinberg, p.279 It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been always thus. DEAN LATTIMER Burnt Sienna. Thats the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas. KEN WEAVER Please dont ask me what the score is, Im not even sure what the game is. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT If you cant learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Everyone seems to have been surprised by the stickiness of the problem, and it is hard to discern the nature of it. -Brooks, p.4 I dont have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Maybe Im lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate. -Brooks, p.7 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. -Brooks, p.7 America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. OSCAR WILDE The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization. ALAN COULT One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be ... [however] if one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work. -Brooks, p.8 We dont know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasnt a fish. JOHN CULKIN ... [OS/360] was late, it took more memory than planned, the costs were several times the estimate, and it did not perform very well until several releases after the first. -The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick Brooks, p. viii Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT Please dont lie to me, unless youre absolutely sure Ill never find out the truth. ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea. -Dutch proverb If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. STANLEY GARN The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls. FATHER ROBERT F CAPON Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. RICHARD M NIXON ... one's authority is not sufficient for his responsibility. -Brooks, p.8 We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. DWIGHT D EISENHOWER If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitiable. JOHN F KENNEDY ... designing grand concepts is fun; finding nitty little bugs is just work. -Brooks, p.8 "Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isnt, it aint. Thats logic." LEWIS CARROLL It takes a long time to understand nothing. EDWARD DAHLBERG To know the world one must construct it. CESARE PAVESE As soon as one freezes a design, it becomes obsolete in terms of its concepts. -Brooks, p.9 Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak. BULLWINKLE the MOOSE All programmers are optimists. -Brooks, p.14 Laws of Computer Programming (1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete. (2) Any given program costs more and takes longer. (3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. (4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented. (5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory. (6) The value of a program is porportional to the weight of its output. (7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it. (8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English. SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results. CALVIN COOLIDGE Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out. TENESSEE WILLIAMS An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name. RENE MAGRITTE Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you. -Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya dont go lookin' for rutabagas. KINGFISH Real Programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC, after the age of 12. He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. M C ESCHER Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences: If at first you don't suceed, transform your data set. The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. PAUL ERLICH I just found the last bug. -Unanimous A large programming effort ... consists of many tasks, some chained end-to-end. The probability that each will go well becomes vanishingly small. -Brooks, p.16 If A equals success, then the formula is: A= X + Y + Z X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. ALBERT EINSTEIN Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either. JOSEPH FISCHER Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.... Fourth Law of Thermodymanics: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero. DAVID ELLIS Cost does indeed vary as the product of the number of men and the number of months. Progress does not. Hence the man-month as a unit for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth. -Brooks, p.16 Frouds Law: A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility: 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P 1 Pot P == 1 Pot T R BUCKMINSTER FULLER The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned. -Brooks, p.17 The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights. J PAUL GETTY Gilb's Laws of Reliability (1) Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. (3) The only difference between the fool, and the criminal who attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front. (5) Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used. (6) The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system are the key to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle. (7) Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited. (8) All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise - which is impossible. (9) Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some useful work done. TOM GILB Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. ABRAHAM KAPLAN The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems. ROGER LEVIAN When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months work to do. -Charles Portman International Computers Limited Real Programmers don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't read the listing or the object deck. Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. ROBERT D SPRECHT (RAND CORP) Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the actual completion. -Brooks, p.21 If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. GERALD WEINBERG Real Programmers don''t write in PASCAL, or BLISS, or ADA, or C, or any of those pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is ofr people with weak memories... Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right. Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance. CONFUCIUS ... when [the omelette] has not set in two minutes, the customer has two choices - wait or eat it raw. -Brooks, p.21 Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein. BOOK OF PROVERBS Brooks Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. -Brooks, p.25 It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. MARK TWAIN The unnatural, that too is natural. GOETHE I used to be indecisive; now Im not sure. GRAFFITI ... the sheer number of minds to be coordinated affects the cost of the effort. -Brooks, p.30 I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didnt like it. SAMUEL GOLDWYN I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. GRAFFITI ... conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design. -Brooks, p.42 (To Walter Cronkite): "Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street" - Neil Armstrong - The purpose of a programming system is to make a computer easy to use. -Brooks, p.43 "You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for you to enter the Promised Land." - The Midrash - Neither function alone nor simplicity alone defines a good design. -Brooks, p.43 " 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability" - George Bernard Shaw - "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof" Ashley Montague - "Birth, Copulation, and Death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks" T. S. Elliot - Add little to little and there will be a big pile. -Ovid "Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood." D. B. Hudson - "Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ' user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover." Bill Gates,Pres.,Microsoft,Inc. - He'll sit here and he'll say, 'Do this! Do that!' And nothing will happen. -Harry S. Truman Eight Things your computer won't do: 1) It won't save you money 2) It won't make your organization run right 3) It won't solve every problem 4) It won't run itself 5) It won't always be right 6) It won't meet all its own needs 7) It won't protect itself 8) It won't become obsolete J. Makower - Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three. -Anonymous Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful,we can organize them into a committee... that will do them in. Civilization Law #1: Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations one can do without thinking about them. I know it. I know what needs to be done - but every time I try to tackle a technical problem some bloody fool wants me to make a decision about trucks - or telephones - or some damn thing. -Robert Heinlein The Man Who Sold the Moon Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence. "Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel" H. L. Mencken - "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion" George Washington - The problem was that everybody who was working there, including myself, wanted to do really neat stuff but they didn't want neat stuff, they just wanted a lot of stuff fast. -Rick Baker, make-up artist for King Kong, Star Wars, et. al. "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty." - Thomas Jefferson - "Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations" - Thomas Jefferson - "Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations" - Thomas Jefferson - The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. -Robert R. Coveyou Oak Ridge National Laboratory "Its hard to forget a girl when you buy here a gift on time" - George Washington - "We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately" - Benjamin Franklin - "Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried" - Thomas Jefferson - It's redundant! It's redundant! -R. E. Dundant "Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles" - Pat Paulsen - I don't know any reason why we couldn't do it, but maybe we can think of one. -Mark C. Davison "An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself" - Camus - "I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it" - W. C. Fields - Bug? That's not a bug, that's a feature. -T. John Wendel "Six years for possession of a cigarette?...I got six months for possession of a deadly weapon!" - cartoon by S. Harris - The computer 'Doth make fools of us all'. -Weinberg, p.152 The Swartzberg Test: The validity of a science is its ability to predict. "There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race" - Alfred North Whitehead - Any fool without the ability to share a laugh on himself will be unable to tolerate programming for long. -Weinberg, p.152 "My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems, and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.... We should be reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities." - James A. Michener - The programmer's national anthem is 'AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH'. -Weinberg, p.152 "To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer" - Morris Kingston - "I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head" - George Wallace - "You don't have to explain something you never said" - Calvin Coolidge - When we finally see the light, we see how once again we have fallen into some foolish assumption, some oafish practice, or some witless blunder. -Weinb es Moines Iowa Who ive land The job cannot be done right unless the necessary tools are available. -Proceedings of the IEEE, 2/78, p.174 After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done. Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone. There is no remedy for sex but more sex. I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete. Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it to be sure. Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches you're going to get or how long it will last. On a clear disk you can seek forever. -Computerworld button