Recently I was looking for some good programming quotes for one of my presentation. I was amazed to find that there are some good programming quotes that are really funny and need some brains to figure out the fun part.
Programming Quotes
Here are 25 of the funny programming quotes in random order.
- The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit. (Anonymous)
- Without requirements or design, programming is the art of adding bugs to an empty text file. (Louis Srygley)
- Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable. (Ralph Johnson)
- The best method for accelerating a computer is the one that boosts it by 9.8 m/s2. (Anonymous)
- I think Microsoft named .Net so it wouldn’t show up in a Unix directory listing. (Oktal)
- If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. (Gerald Weinberg)
- There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. (Alan J. Perlis)
- Ready, fire, aim: the fast approach to software development. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim: the slow approach to software development. (Anonymous)
- It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature. (Anonymous)
- One man’s crappy software is another man’s full-time job. (Jessica Gaston)
- A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. (Doug Linder)
- Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. (Martin Golding
- Programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. (Michael Sinz)
- Deleted code is debugged code. (Jeff Sickel)
- Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. (Edward V Berard)
- If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. (Edsger Dijkstra)
- Software undergoes beta testing shortly before it’s released. Beta is Latin for “still doesn’t work. (Anonymous)
- Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning. (Rick Cook)
- It’s a curious thing about our industry: not only do we not learn from our mistakes, but we also don’t learn from our successes. (Keith Braithwaite)
- There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)
- In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. (Anonymous)
- The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren’t there. (Gordon Bell)
- The best performance improvement is the transition from the nonworking state to the working state. (J. Osterhout)
- The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it’s too late. (Seymour Cray)
- Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job. (Mosher’s Law of Software Engineering)
So what are your favorite and funny quotes? Please share with all of us.
shivangi sharma says
very nice collection of words
keep up the good work
Park says
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
Lito says
C++, where friends have access to your private members.
SKY says
“Code never lies, Comments sometimes do.”
deepthinker says
If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read!
awesomeme says
public My_Corpse Life(Education ed, Knowledge kn, Passion p, Google g){volatile bool success=true,alive=true; while(alive){while(!success){keeTyring();} Build_repeat();}}
Rashmi says
Blame doesn’t fix bugs
Arash says
We program a human Life by making his/her life easy
MyatSN says
Agree!!!!
NotGoodAtJokes says
I cannot function without delegates
johan says
Here’s what I came up with.
Don’t treat a semi colon as an end of line but rather as a possibility of a new beginning.
Inspirational right? LOL
Héctor says
Nice!
James Grundner says
“I don’t care if it is the ‘proper’ way to do it, I just need to get it done.” <- This is what technical debt sounds like.
Joey Orating says
“Programming languages are all the same; you just need a logic.” – Joey O.
George Clinton says
There are three levels of design: It can be foolproof, Sometimes it can be idiot proof, It can never be asshole proof.
Nate says
Messy code === incompetence
Tonya says
“VI has 2 modes. One that beeps at you, and another that ruins everything.”
yahol says
Golden!
CodeThumper says
One of mine is Profanity: The truly multi-platform programming language.
Mitendra says
My favourite one:
Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable. (Ralph Johnson)
Bakeca Incontri Udine says
It’s my favorite quote too. This one is also very good: Deleted code is debugged code. (Jeff Sickel)
MyatSN says
Me Too!!! Deleted code is debugged code. (Jeff Sickel)
Melinda Green says
Everyone knows the saying that to the hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, when your hammer is C++, every problem looks like a thumb.
dieta dukan says
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Quang Le says
Yep. Its funny. I like quote “The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.” 🙂
Adam Eve says
These are fantastic
just one other
When the budget is low, go after the low hanging fruit.
Akash says
Funny and true at the same time 🙂
retrotecchie says
“In a world without walls…..who needs Windows?”
“All software boils down to pure binary. It works or it doesn’t.”
“Spend two years writing a programe to allow someone do twice the work in half the time…their spare time generatedv will be spent on the phone to IT support.”
Six says
I would like to combine one of the typical sentence that a RolePlayer has heard at lest once in his/her life, with something that often happens in programming too…
“Last famous words: No need to manage this case, it will never happen!”
Have a nice day falks!
Ibrahim Levent says
“Document What You Know When You Know It.”
From book “Framework Process Patterns: Lessons Learned Developing Application Frameworks”
“I’m always skeptical of companies that don’t use their own products.”
http://oracamp.com/case-study-oracles-own-e-business-suite-global-single-instance
“Good design resembles nature.”
http://quotedepot.net/quotations/good-design-resembles-nature/161835
ricardo says
Nice Post, but The Quote :
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning. (Anonymous)”
Is not anonymous this comes from rich cook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Cook)
Pankaj says
Thanks friend. Edited the post for this.
Jan says
It’s not a bug – it’s a feature
— A feature that cannot be turned off is a bug.
Clyde Calcote says
Given enough time, I can meet any software deadline.
dhworth says
Awesome
Jens says
“To err is human but to really foul things up you need a computer.” (The Economist)
anon says
The only way of writing less bugs is writing less code.
dhworth says
fewer bugs…
Vimal says
” It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature.”
I think This one always happens. LOL
Fran says
This makes me remember this joke:
“Did you hear about that new branded MegaSuperComputer?
It returns from an infinite loop just on 6 seconds!”
Zasca says
In Pascal, God is real. Unless you declare it as integer!
(In Pascal, all varables starting a to m are real by default)
Jens says
Just curious, which flavor are you talking about? I encountered a few flavors of Pascal in my life, and none of them had the feature you mentioned. It sounds more like a Fortran feature in my ears.
Malla says
Good One 🙂
baskerbill says
So Misha, Perl is plenty of problems 🙂
Roman Hansen says
Great Quotes !
anon says
software bugs are intentional side effects
Misha says
My favourite: “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think
“I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.”
Terry says
Dilbert: The prototype is done. Come take a look at the user interface.
Pointy Haired Boss: It works great but make sure this thing is totally idiot-proof.
Dilbert: Again?
Mike says
“Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction — from which, by induction, it is evident that every program
can be reduced to one instruction that does not work.” – Ken Arnold.
Tim Rose says
The one common language across all programmers is profanity.
alan says
“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
anon says
a good programmer is master of the computer. The computer is master of the not-so-good programmers.
Bruce Wells says
How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None, that is a hardware problem!
jwb says
Was going to say the “10 kinds of people”, since it’s one of my faves, but got beaten to the punch…
I’m not sure it quite fits the category here, but I’ll give ya one of the rules of software development:
“Cheap, fast, reliable: Pick 2”
Narud Shiro says
My programs never have bugs, they just develop random features. (Radial Ronnie)
James N says
My personal addition is “The most important word in a programmers vocabulary is ‘should’. e.g. ‘It should work’, ‘we should be able to get that done on time’…” If that doesn’t make sense watch Pitch Black and remember the line “It looks clear”. That should help 🙂
Marc Dix says
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. (Martin Golding)
A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street. (Doug Linder)
I pretty much love these two quotes. Prettty good Tipps. 🙂 Will keep them in mind during projects.
Larson says
I submit to this one myself: (the one Steve mentioned)
“Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers – Unknown”
I’m also fond of these
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning. (Anonymous)”
“Ready, fire, aim: the fast approach to software development. Ready, aim, aim, aim, aim: the slow approach to software development. (Anonymous)”
“If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. (Edsger Dijkstra)”
Ted says
Knock knock!
– Who’s there?
– (long pause) Java!
Knock knock!
– Who’s there?
– C++
Knock knock!
– Assembler!
Rishi Raj says
cool! lol
Steve Stanicki says
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers – Unknown
Davyd says
My sig:
The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague.
– Djikstra.
M. says
Documentation is like sex: when it’s good – it’s really good, and when it’s not so good – it’s better than nothing.
Sol says
Software is like cathedrals. First we build them, then we pray.
Andy says
lol this one is funny..!! :V
Bob Armour says
I can’t believe that you missed out these two…
“There are 10 kinds of people – those who understand binary and those who don’t”
“Programmers always confuse Halloween with Christmas because OCT 31 = DEC 25”
Chris Quinn says
Not only have we not produced artificial intelligence, we haven’t even produced artificial stupidity!
Chris Boyle says
I came across one not so long ago. “Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying that a**l s*x is nice because it works on all genders.”
Claudio says
Question: Why did the multithreaded chicken cross the road?
Answer: other to side. To the get.
http://www.pluralsight-training.net/community/blogs/mike/archive/2004/05/25/415.aspx
UJ says
Coder: It’s working on My Machine!!
PM: We are not shipping your machine!!