Great Computer Programming Quotes

Computers

“Computers are useless. They can only

give you answers.”
(Pablo Picasso)

“Computers are like bikinis. They save

people a lot of guesswork.”
(Sam Ewing)

“They have computers, and they may

have other weapons of mass destruction.”
(Janet Reno)

“That’s what’s cool about working with

computers. They don’t argue, they

remember everything, and they don’t drink

all your beer.”
(Paul Leary)

“If the automobile had followed the same

development cycle as the computer, a

Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a

million miles per gallon, and explode once

a year, killing everyone inside.”
(Robert X. Cringely)

Computer Intelligence

“Computers are getting smarter all the

time. Scientists tell us that soon they will

be able to talk to us. (And by ‘they’, I

mean ‘computers’. I doubt scientists will

ever be able to talk to us.)”
(Dave Barry)

“I’ve noticed lately that the paranoid fear

of computers becoming intelligent and

taking over the world has almost entirely

disappeared from the common culture.

Near as I can tell, this coincides with the

release of MS-DOS.”
(Larry DeLuca)

“The question of whether computers can

think is like the question of whether

submarines can swim.”
(Edsger W. Dijkstra)

“It’s ridiculous to live 100 years and only

be able to remember 30 million bytes.

You know, less than a compact disc.

The human condition is really becoming

more obsolete every minute.”
(Marvin Minsky)

Trust

“The city’s central computer told you?

R2D2, you know better than to trust a

strange computer!”
(C3PO)

“Never trust a computer you can’t throw

out a window.”
(Steve Wozniak)

Hardware

“Hardware: The parts of a computer

system that can be kicked.”
(Jeff Pesis)

Software

“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)

“I’ve finally learned what ‘upward

compatible’ means. It means we get to

keep all our old mistakes.”
(Dennie van Tassel)

Operating Systems

“There are two major products that come

out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We

don’t believe this to be a coincidence.”
(Jeremy S. Anderson)

“19 Jan 2038 at 3:14:07 AM”
(End of the word according to Unix–2^32

seconds after January 1, 1970)

“Every operating system out there is

about equal… We all suck.”
(Microsoft senior vice president Brian

Valentine describing the state of the art in

OS security, 2003)

“Microsoft has a new version out,

Windows XP, which according to

everybody is the ‘most reliable Windows

ever.‘ To me, this is like saying that

asparagus is ‘the most articulate vegetable

ever.‘ “
(Dave Barry)

Internet

“The Internet? Is that thing still around?”


(Homer Simpson)

“The Web is like a dominatrix.

Everywhere I turn, I see little buttons

ordering me to Submit.”
(Nytwind)

“Come to think of it, there are already a

million monkeys on a million typewriters,

and Usenet is nothing like Shakespeare.”
(Blair Houghton)

Software Industry

“The most amazing achievement of the

computer software industry is its

continuing cancellation of the steady and

staggering gains made by the computer

hardware industry.”
(Henry Petroski)

“True innovation often comes from the

small startup who is lean enough to

launch a market but lacks the heft to own

it.”
(Timm Martin)

“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)

“It is not about bits, bytes and protocols,

but profits, losses and margins.”
(Lou Gerstner)

“We are Microsoft. Resistance Is Futile.

You Will Be Assimilated.”
(Bumper sticker)

Software Demos

“No matter how slick 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.”
(Mark Gibbs)

Software Patents

“The bulk of all patents are crap.

Spending time reading them is stupid.

It’s up to the patent owner to do so, and

to enforce them.”
(Linus Torvalds)

Complexity

“Controlling complexity is the essence of

computer programming.”
(Brian Kernigan)

“Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of

developers, it makes products difficult to

plan, build and test, it introduces security

challenges, and it causes end-user and

administrator frustration.”
(Ray Ozzie)

“There are two ways of constructing a

software design. One way is to make it

so simple that there are obviously no

deficiencies. And the other way is to

make it so complicated that there are no

obvious deficiencies.”
(C.A.R. Hoare)

“The function of good software is to

make the complex appear to be simple.”
(Grady Booch)

Ease of Use

“Just remember: you’re not a ‘dummy,’ no

matter what those computer books claim.

The real dummies are the people

who–though technically expert–couldn’t

design hardware and software that’s

usable by normal consumers if their lives

depended upon it.”
(Walter Mossberg)

“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)

“There’s an old story about the person

who wished his computer were as easy to

use as his telephone. That wish has

come true, since I no longer know how to

use my telephone.”
(Bjarne Stroustrup)

Users

“Any fool can use a computer. Many

do.”
(Ted Nelson)

“There are only two industries that refer

to their customers as ‘users’.”
(Edward Tufte)

Programmers

“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.”
(Rich Cook)

“Most of you are familiar with the virtues

of a programmer. There are three, of

course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.”
(Larry Wall)

“The trouble with programmers is that you

can never tell what a programmer is

doing until it’s too late.”
(Seymour Cray)

“That’s the thing about people who think

they hate computers. What they really

hate is lousy programmers.”
(Larry Niven)

“For a long time it puzzled me how

something so expensive, so leading edge,

could be so useless. And then it

occurred to me that 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.”
(Bill Bryson)

“Computer science education cannot make

anybody an expert programmer any more

than studying brushes and pigment can

make somebody an expert painter.”
(Eric Raymond)

“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.”
(IEEE Grid newsmagazine)

“A hacker on a roll may be able to

produce–in a period of a few

months–something that a small

development group (say, 7-8 people)

would have a hard time getting together

over a year. IBM used to report that

certain programmers might be as much

as 100 times as productive as other

workers, or more.”
(Peter Seebach)

“The best programmers are not marginally

better than merely good ones. They are

an order-of-magnitude better, measured by

whatever standard: conceptual creativity,

speed, ingenuity of design, or

problem-solving ability.”
(Randall E. Stross)

“A great lathe operator commands several

times the wage of an average lathe

operator, but a great writer of software

code is worth 10,000 times the price of

an average software writer.”
(Bill Gates)

Source : http://www.devtopics.com/101-great-computer-programming-quotes/