"Do you have a sledge hammer or a brick handy ?" — Top thing you don't want to hear from Tech Support.
Users /nm./: collective term for those who use computers. Users are divided into three types: novice, intermediate and expert.    \nNovice Users: people who are afraid that simply pressing a key might break their computer.    \nIntermediate Users: people who don't know how to fix their computer after they've just pressed a key that broke it.      \nExpert Users: people who break other people's computers.    \n— From the Jargon File.
"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday.  \nWhy ? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially... They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet.  \nAnd again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.  \nAnd if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material." — Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explaining how the Internet works (2006).
"Science is supposedly the method by which we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. In computer science, we all are standing on each others' feet." — G. Popek.
"Press CTRL-ALT-DEL now for an IQ test." — (At the time of Win95/98/ME)
"On the Internet you can be anything you want. It's strange that so many people choose to be stupid."
"Reading, Pa., county controller Judith Kraines complained at a commissioners' meeting in January about having to type letters and do other business on a typewriter because her computer was old and no one had been able to get it to work for two years. 'If we had a computer', she said, 'letters would go out faster'. Three days later, she announced that the computer she was complaining about in fact had not been plugged in to any electrical outlet and that when the plug was inserted and the computer was turned on, it worked fine." — Elected luser of the year.
"Los Angeles County officials have asked that manufacturers, suppliers and contractors stop using the terms 'master' and 'slave' regarding computer hard drives, saying such terms are unacceptable and offensive. Additionally, the term 'e-mail' will now be called 'e-person letter', 'dumb terminals' will now be 'CPU-challenged monitors' and 'Unix' will be referred to as 'sexually dysfunctional operating system'. Obviously, 'fingering' is now banned entirely." — Kevin Fizz.
"Artificial intelligence ? No thank you, I don't need crutches." — Szylowicz (my former assembler teacher).
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats natural stupidity."
"If computers had invented humans as part of a BI program (biological intelligence), humans would have been tossed aside as barely having achieved perfect game play at Tic-Tac-Toe." — Epine.
"If you don't want to be replaced by a computer, don't act like one." — Arno Penzias.
"1f y0u c4n r34d 7h15, y0u r34||y n33d 70 637 |41d."
"This manual says what our product actually does, no matter what the salesman may have told you it does." — In a californian graphic board manual, 1985.
"I sit looking at this damn computer screen all day long, day in and day out, week after week, and think: Man, if I could just find the 'on' switch..." — Zachary Good.
"Smith & Wesson — the original point and click interface."
"They say one of a baby's first non-verbal forms communication is pointing. Clicking must be somewhere just after that."
"Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools." — Gene Brown.
"Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it."
"Remember, the problem is not that people are stupid; the problem is that modems are cheap." — Vince Sabio.
"Why do we want intelligent terminals when there are so many stupid users ?"
"If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems." — Alan Kay.
"I said that 30 years ago! Why does no one ever listen to me ?." — Alan Kay.
"Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer." — John R Searls.
"There is unexpected beauty hidden everywhere in this world — one just has to be open to seeing it. Remember that the next time you sneeze on your monitor." — Nathan Walton.
Login: yes     \nPassword: i dont have one    \npassword is incorrect    \nLogin: yes      \nPassword: incorrect
"On the negative side, I've been getting charged for a ton of stuff I didn't order lately. On the positive side, I did win that 'Who's Got the Best Password' contest on AOL last week." — Spike Donner.
"Making fun of AOL users is like making fun of the kid in the wheel chair."
"I can only imagine the deprivation and loneliness you will feel from a lack of human companionship when your 1000 free AOL hours run out." — Nate B.
"The only business that is ever threatened by improved technologies are those that need to be left behind."
"It's like being a doctor, but without getting my paws all gooky." — Dogbert the Network Administrator.
"OK, so the computer has understood, but what about me ?" — Eugene Wigner about numerical simulations.
"Morons. These people who live in my apartment complex are connected to my wireless. They must think they're super-cool hackers by breaking into my completely unsecure network. Unfortunately, the connection works both ways. Long story short, they now have loads of horse porn on their computer." — Mootar from bash.org.
"MMORPG players are freaks. If I ever have kids, and I catch them doing anything with a computer except for normal stuff like porn and hacking into school to change their grades, I will beat their asses like a red headed step child." — CF.
"I've always wondered if there was a Hezbollah version of minesweeper where you get points for blowing up on your first move." — James Lileks.
"I went to a gentleman's cybercafe — and they offered me a 'laptop dance'."
"I can't uninstall it, there seems to be some kind of 'Uninstall Shield'."
Helpdesk: Double click on "My Computer"    \nUser: I can't see your computer.    \nHelpdesk: No, double click on "My Computer" on your computer.      \nUser: Huh?   \nHelpdesk: There is an icon on your computer labeled "My Computer". Double click on it.    \nUser: What's your computer doing on mine?
"It took me many years but I have gained access to the root account and have removed the user God." — Saros (Jeff Batten).
"Prolonged contact with the computer turns mathematicians into clerks and vice versa." — Buy at Amazon.comAlan J. Perlis.
"Dude, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid you've been hacked — the FTP server at 127.0.0.1 has all your personal files. See for yourself; just log in with your normal id...." — Classic joke on new Unix users.
"Note to self: www.manpages.com is NOT an online resource to get *nix man pages'" — Techdeck.
"I went to the gf's work last week, they had no antivirus. 279 viruses. The best part was they showed me their backup strategy: they use custom software and they backed up the application by dragging the desktop icon (a shortcut) to their cdrw. They had 2 years worth of shortcuts." — gweebz0r.
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file." — Bertil Jonell.
"Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven." — Buy at Amazon.comThomas Jefferson.
"Crap... Someone knocked over my recycle bin... There's icons all over my desktop..." — billiam.
"Relax, its only ONES and ZEROS !"
"Qrpelcgvat ebg13 ivbyngrf gur QZPN! Cercner gb or fhrq!!"
"Who were the beta testers for Preparations A through G ?" — Bumper Sticker.
"If it's there and you can see it — it's real.    \nIf it's not there and you can see it — it's virtual.    \nIf it's there and you can't see it — it's transparent.  \nIf it's not there and you can't see it — you erased it !"
"Back up my hard disk ? I can't find the reverse switch !"
"I have NOT lost my mind — I have it backed up on tape somewhere."
"What do you mean by 'RAM DISK is not an installation procedure' ?"
"'INSERT DISK THREE' ? But I can only get two in the drive !"
"Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy disk ?"
"Daddy, what does FORMATTING DRIVE C mean ?"
"See daddy ? All the keys are in alphabetical order now."
"Worth noting: running 'reboot -h' does NOT produce a helpful usage message."
"If you can't beat your computer at chess, do what I did — try kick-boxing." — Buy at Amazon.comMatt Larson.
"rm -rf /bin/laden"
"No printing is permitted of this book.     \nThis book cannot be given to someone else.     \nThis book cannot be read aloud." — License terms for Adobe ebooks.
"Ban cryptography ! Yes. Let's also ban pencils, pens and paper, since criminals can use them to draw plans of the joint they are casing or even, god forbid, create one time pads to pass uncrackable codes to each other. Ban open spaces since criminals could use them to converse with each other out of earshot of the police. Let's ban flags since they could be used to pass secret messages in semaphore. In fact let's just ban all forms of verbal and non-verbal communication — let's see those criminals make plans now !"
"Cryptanalysis is the study of turning other peoples' harmless mistakes into catastrophic errors."
"Cracking the Italian codes was something you did at the pub over a beer. It was both relaxing and enjoyable..." — Peter Hilton, WW2 British codebreaker.
"No new cypher is worth looking at unless it comes from someone who has broken a very hard one." — Friedman.
"Why is it 'marketing' when a company helps itself to my information against my will and 'piracy' or 'industrial espionage' if I helped myself to THEIR information against their will ?" — Causality.
"Phase 1: Uncritical acceptance.   \nPhase 2: Wild enthusiasm.     \nPhase 3: Dejected disillusionment.      \nPhase 4: Total confusion.        \nPhase 5: Search for the guilty.     \nPhase 6: Punishment of the innocent.    \nPhase 7: Promotion of nonparticipants." — Harsh Reality of IT Project Life Cycle.
"Q: What is the difference between a computer and a woman ?     \nA: A woman won't accept a 3 and 1/2-inch floppy !"
"I don't care if you ARE getting a PhD in it ! Get away from that damn computer and go find a woman !" — Paul Tyma's dad.
"If some unemployed punk in New Jersey can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95 this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka !" — Dennis Miller.
"When I was a teenager, Mom said I'd go blind if I didn't quit doing *that*. Maybe she was right — since the invention of internet porn, computer monitors keep getting bigger and bigger. !" — Bill Ervin.
"Hey ! It compiles ! Ship it !"
"Internet Explorer Tip: when it says 'turn off images', it only refers to inline images. Which is why it's safe to go to Goatse but not Tubgirl. I think it's obvious how I figured this out." — Bivens.
"Broadband sucks in the sense that goatse loads before i can close the window..." — Ich.
"Ooops. My brain just hit a bad sector."
"Those who can't write programs, write help files."
"Smash forehead on keyboard to continue..."
"Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue..."
"The world is coming to an end... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS !"
"Jesus saves... So why the fuck didn't I ?"
"Yeah, Jesus tried to save me, but there was no space left on his memory card." — arucardegungrave.
"Yo moma is such a whore, if she was a chmod she'd be 777 because everyone has access..."
"Yo moma is like HTML: Tiny head, huge body."
"HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide." — Robert Harvey.
"I tried setting my hotmail password to penis. It said my password wasn't long enough. :(" — Raven.
"Technology is always first developed for one of four things:   \nThe Military   \nSexual Urges    \nEasy Money      \nSecurity (making sure the above services are properly paid for).
If we can't have sex with it, blow it up, or make loads of cash off of it, we're just not interested." — tcd004.
"You know you're a geek when... You try to shoo a fly away from the monitor with your cursor. That just happened to me. It was scary." — Juuso Heimonen.
"I rigged my cellular to send a message to my PDA, which is online with my PC, to get it to activate the voicemail, which sends the message to the inbox of my email, which routes it to the PDA, which beams it back to the cellular. Then I realized my gadgets have a better social life than I do !" — Tom Ostad.
"Kids today have so many advantages I never had. There's no telling what I could've accomplished with a home computer and a handgun." — LeMel Hebert-Williams.
"We will never become a truly paper-less society until the Palm Pilot folks come out with WipeMe 1.0." — Andy Pierson.
"I don't understand why cheerleaders won't talk to me. Maybe I don't throw five touchdowns against Newport High, but let's see one of those football morons program in assembly language. !" — Chris Lipe.
"She said she was hot for me, so i gave her a spare heatsink. She didn't seem happy. I just don't understand women." — MrRoboto1024.
"Procter & Gamble, for example, uses an SGI system to study the aerodynamics of Pringle's potato chips. !" — From a ZDnet article.
"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." — Buy at Amazon.com Bill Gates.
"Remember when...? A computer was something on TV from a science fiction show. A window was something you hated to clean and RAM was the cousin of a goat... Meg was the name of my girlfriend and gig was your middle finger upright. Now they all mean different things and that really mega bytes. An application was for employment. A program was a TV show. A cursor used profanity. A keyboard was a piano. Memory was something that you lost with age. A CD was a bank account. And if you had a 3 1/2" floppy you hoped that nobody found out. Compress was something you did to the garbage not something you did to a file. And if you unzipped anything in public you'd be in jail for awhile. Log on was adding wood to the fire. Hard drive was a long trip on the road. A mouse pad was where a mouse lived and a backup happened to your commode. Cut you did with a pocket knife. Paste you did with glue. A web was a spider's home and a virus was the flu. I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper and the memory in my head. I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash but when it happens they wish they were dead !"
"The ultimate metric that I would like to propose for user friendliness is quite simple: if this system was a person, how long would it take before you punched it in the nose ?" — Tom Carey.
"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value." — Carl Sagan.
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." — Buy at Amazon.comLord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." — Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
"I see no progress in this industry. These clocks are no faster than the ones they made a hundred years ago." — Buy at Amazon.comHenry Ford, while visiting a museum.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." — Buy at Amazon.comThomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18 000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of the future may have only 1 000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1½ tons." — Popular Mechanics, March 1949.
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." — The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
"But what... is it good for ?" — An engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip in 1968.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." — Ken Olson, president/founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
"The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things. What businessman knows about point sizes on typefaces or the value of variable point sizes ? Who out there in the general marketplace even knows what a 'font' is ?
The whole concept and attitude towards icons and hieroglyphs is actually counterrevolutionary — it's a language that is hardly 'user friendly'. This type of machine was developed by hardware hackers working out of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. It has yet to find popular success. There seems to be some mysterious user resistance to this type of machine." — Buy at Amazon.comJohn C. Dvorak on why the Macintosh would fail, San Francisco Examiner, 1984/02/19.
"The Mac finder really puts the 'stupid' in 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'."
"Macintosh computer are easy to use. It's also easy to stick your hand in a wood chipper."
"Saying to buy a Mac because your anti-virus expired is like saying you're out of condoms so you're just going to fuck dudes."
"Steve Jobs may have the apple, but Bill Gates has the entire orchard !"
"I just realized that PC is what got Steve Jobs in the end."
"Steve Jobs is praised for the elegant styling of the jails he designed." — RMS.
"A Mac vs. PC commercial you'll never see: 'Whatcha doin, PC?' 'I'm playing this new game'. 'Oh really, which one?' 'Any'. 'Oh'. (silence) (fade)." — ez76.
"I want to see the Korean girl who works at the iPhone factory v. the Zune tattoo guy." — MdHatter about Apple commercials.
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." — Jack Valenti, MPAA president, testimony to the House of Representatives, 1982.
"Wanted: Expert Java programmers, 5+ years experience." — Posted in 1998.
"Blink your eyelids periodically to lubricate your eyes." — Page 16 of the HP "Environmental, Health Safety Handbook for Employees".
"Maintenance Contractors always dress up nice, with a tie and everything because they believe that a customer will trust a nicely dressed guy with their million dollar equipment just because he's got a nice tie..." — Buy at Amazon.comSimon Travaglia (the B.O.F.H.).
"What were once minuscule workplace annoyances are now major priority issues. Like noisy fans and power supplies ! ANYONE who complains about a noisy fan or power supply needs to spend a week or two in the presence of a PUNCH CARD machine. Three weeks later, when they recover their sanity, give them their old computer back. See if they complain. I THINK NOT !" — Buy at Amazon.comSimon Travaglia (the B.O.F.H.).
"There's no problem so large it can't be solved by killing the user off, deleting their files, closing their account and reporting their REAL earnings to the IRS." — The Buy at Amazon.comB.O.F.H..
"In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him." — Buy at Amazon.comScott Adams (author of Dilbert).
"I will write on a huge cement block 'BY ACCEPTING THIS BRICK THROUGH YOUR WINDOW, YOU ACCEPT IT AS IS AND AGREE TO MY DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS WELL AS DISCLAIMERS OF ALL LIABILITY, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL, THAT MAY ARISE FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THIS BRICK INTO YOUR BUILDING.' And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer and run like hell." — DmncAtrny.
"Whenever my Boss pisses me off, I secretly change the password to his e-mail account.
When he can't log on, he'll piss and moan for 5 minutes, cursing the computer. Then he'll come groveling to me for my help. Once he's groveled enough, I re-enter the right password from my office, go to his and watch him look like a dummy while I log-on easily.
I just love it. Heh, heh, heh."
Men think that computers should be referred to as female, just like ships, because:
No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
The language in which they communicate among themselves is incomprehensible to everyone else.
The message "Bad command or File Name" is about as informative as "if you don't know why I'm mad at you, I'm certainly not going to tell you !"
Your smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval.
As soon as you make a commitment to one, you spend half your paycheck on accessories for it.
Miss a period and they go wild.
You do the same thing for years, and suddenly it's wrong.
Women think computers are male because:
They have lots of data, but are still clueless.
They are supposed to solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had only waited a bit longer, you could have had a better model.
To get their attention, you have to "turn them on".
A big "power-surge" will knock them out for the rest of the night !
It is always necessary to have a backup.
They'll do whatever you say if you push the right buttons.
Size does matter.
"Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections." — Buy at Amazon.comSamuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
"The Internet ? Is that thing still around ?" — Buy at Amazon.comHomer Simpson.
"Twitter is stupid. And Instagram is Twitter for people who can't read."
"ASCII and ye shall receive."
"Will the information superhighway have any rest stops ?"
"I get mail, therefore I am." — Scott Adams.
"In fact, you can throw away the last three syllables of 'superhighway'. It's a soup. Call it Information Soup and we're getting somewhere." — Charles S. Murray.
"E-mail — When it absolutely, positively has to get lost at the speed of light." — Jerry Vuoso.
"Plonk /excl./: The sound a newbie makes as he falls to the bottom of a kill file." — From the Jargon File.
"The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents."
"Usenet is a Mobius strand of spaghetti." — Buy at Amazon.comJames "Kibo" Parry.
"The Internet is the end of civilizations, cultures, interests and ethics." — Official Iraqi government statement.
"I had to google 'jfgi' to see what it meant. The irony is overwhelming." — classyhorse23.
"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is nothing like Shakespeare." — Blair Houghton.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." — John Gilmore.
"I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you may not get it." — ambivalist.
"I prefer IP jokes; it's all in the delivery." — ianschenck.
"I could tell you a joke about TCP, but I'd have to keep repeating it until you got it." — Razakel.
"What's a net Nazi ? That's what's left after you deduct the wholesale price and overhead from a gross Nazi." — Rich Tietjens.
"Of course, the best way to get accurate information on Usenet is to post something wrong and wait for corrections." — Matthew Austern.
"I was having trouble getting screen dumps in unix so I went into #unix and said 'Does anyone know how to do a screen dump in unix?' 5 minutes and no reply, so I modify it a bit 'Two hot girls are stripping on webcam for me, how do i take a picture to show you guys ?' 13 offers of assistance within 2 minutes. Brilliant." — Numi.
"If you're having trouble sounding condescendent, get a Unix user to show you how." — Scott Adams.
"In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding 'aol.com' to people's Usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace prize." — Mark Atkinson.
"IRC is just multiplayer notepad."
"If the Internet is a superhighway, then AOL must be a fleet of farm equipment that straddles five lanes and pays no heed to 'Keep Right Except to Pass' signs." — Marko Peric.
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea; massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." — Eugene Spafford.
"IRC is like one giant round of intellectual bukake." — Hatamoto.
"I see ads saying that I can 'GET PAID to Surf the Web !'. Let's see... I'm at work checking out my favorite porn sites right now. Hey, I'm already getting paid to surf the web !" — Bill Ervin Tigard
"Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google."
"Once you've googled every single guy whose last name you remember that you slept with, the internet sorta becomes a useless tool." — From Craig's list.
"Looking at the 2001 Google Zeitgeist, I see disturbing trends:      \nTop women searches: Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna & Aaliyah.
And top men searches: Nostradamus, Bin Laden, Eminem, Michael Jackson & Howard Stern." — jonr.
"The web is a dominatrix. Every where I turn, I see little buttons ordering me to Submit." — Nytwind.
"Sell a man a phish he can scam for a day, but teach him how to phish and he can scam for himself for a lifetime."
"Imagine a school with children that can read or write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live." — Peter Cochrane.
"To ruin the net to save Disney is the equivalent of burning down the library of Alexandria to save monastic scribes."
"The smiley is an attack on writers and readers alike. If it is funny, it doesn't need a smiley. If is not funny, a smiley won't help it. The smiley teaches writers that anything they write will pass as humor as long as it is punctuated properly. It teaches readers that they must ignore their better judgment, and look only at punctuation to determine intent." — Jim Showalter.
"I correct autocorrect more often than autocorrect corrects me..."
"Computer security." — Oxymoron
"Security: If you do it right, everyone thinks you have wasted your time. If you do it wrong, it is all your fault." — SmallFurryCreature.
"Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time." — Edward Felten and Gary McGraw.
"Those willing to give up a little security by using a little obscurity deserve neither security nor root privileges." — B. F.
"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.
"The only truly secure computer is one buried in concrete, with the power turned off and the network cable cut."
It's not clear whether 'big data' means more needles, or just a bigger haystack." — Joe Touch.
"NO, You cannot dial 911, I'm downloading my mail !!!"
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup full of magnetic tapes."
"hURL /n/ a link to a web site that makes you want to puke." — Cathie Walker.
"2400 Baud makes you want to get out and push !"
"My computer's sick. I think my modem is a carrier."
"Old lie — The check is in the mail.
New lie — I didn't check the e-mail." — Brian Fine.
"CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh.."
"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure." — Buy at Amazon.comDouglas Adams (1952—2001)
Take a look at the information superhighway humor page.
"Vista is a fatass riced-out American SUV with flat tires and the brakes stuck halfway on. Dump that POS and try again." — GameboyRMH.
"Vista is the the George W Bush of the technology industry."
"Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous system... I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their technology too." — Scott McNealy.
"Putting Windows [3.11] on top of DOS is like putting whipped cream on a road apple [horse poop]." — Scott McNealy.
"Saying your OS is the best in the world 'cause more people use it is like saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world."
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." — Bill Gates, 1981.
"[A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [F]ail ?" — Does Bill Gates know the answer ?
"Southern DOS: Y'all reckon? Yep/Nope"
"Windows: From the people who brought you EDLIN !"
"Win95 not found, [P]arty, [C]elebrate, [D]rink ?"
"Windows 95 /n./ 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition."
"I wonder what Jesus would do if He had to reload Windows 95 for the eighth time today ?" — Mirabour Gilbride.
"They say if you play a Microsoft CD backwards, you hear satanic messages. That's nothing, 'cause if you play it forwards, it installs Windows." — Alluvium.
"Microsoft went into orbit because it had a booster rocket attached to it called IBM." — Bill Gates.
"English, the Microsoft of languages..."
"Your mouse has moved. Windows NT must be restarted for the change to take effect. Reboot now ? [OK]"
"WinNT: All the headaches of Unix, but in a pretty, windowed environment."
"WinNT: supports Plug'n Play devices, just not Plug 'n Play..."
"DOS never says 'EXCELLENT command or filename'."
"MS-DOS isn't dead, it just smells that way." — Henry Spencer.
"MS-DOS, an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would sneer at." — Dave Trowbridge, Computer Technology Review, Aug 90.
"It's been said that Bill Gates named his company after his dick..."
"DOS: No serial number required.  \n95/98/SE: To cut down on casual piracy, enter this serial number.   \nWin2K: Since that didn't work, it might phone home unless you ask nicely that it not phone home.      \nXP: Since that didn't work, it won't activate until you let it phone home. Don't worry, we won't nuke existing installations.   \nVista: Since that didn't work, we'll nuke any box that stops phoning."
"Ever notice how fast Windows runs ?   \n— Neither did I."
"Letting XP run for more than a month is like re-using a condom 50 or 60 times. Theoretically it can work, but is sick and ill advised."
"I can't use Windows. My cat ate my mouse."
"Restart, Reboot, Reinstall." — The three Rs to windows tech support.
"If at first you don't succeed, work for Microsoft."
"There's no set architecture in Linux. All roads lead to madness." — Microsoft executive Martin Taylor.
"Microsoft: Where do you want to go today ?    \nLinux: Where do you want to go tomorrow ?     \nBSD/OS-X: Are you guys coming or what ?!?"
"We are Microsoft. Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated." — Bumper sticker.
"Double your drive space — delete Windows !" — Bumper sticker.
"If you don't know where you want to go, we will make sure you get there." — Microsoft slogan translated in Japanese.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates ?" — Dino Esposito.
"I think MS named .Net so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing." — Oktal.
"I like women the way I like my filesystem: FAT and 16." — DevilsX.
"I like my web servers just like my women... insecure and full of holes waiting to be exploited." — B. G.
"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
"Is OS/2 only half an operating system ?"
"Overall, OS/2's problems fall into two categories: IBM and Microsoft." — Buy at Amazon.comJean-Louis Gassee.
"Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer." — Erik Naggum.
"Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." — Bill Gates.
"The only people who have anything to fear from free software (such as GNAT) are those whose products are worth even less." — David Emery.
"...the best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system." — Buy at Amazon.comBill Gates.
"Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization." — Jon Bentley.
"What does the Start button do — isn't the computer already running ?" — A Win95 user.
"Why should I press the Start button to turn the computer off ?" — A Win95 user.
"Windows95: It's like upgrading from Reagan to Bush." — Buy at Amazon.comAndy G. Ihnatko.
"People say Microsoft paid 14M$ for using the Rolling Stones song 'Start me up' in their commercials. This is wrong. Microsoft payed 14M$ only for a part of the song. For instance, they didn't use the line 'You'll make a grown man cry'."
"In Microsoft's case: RC = Alpha, Release = Beta, Service Pack 1 = RC, Service Pack 2 = Release." — Maldivia.
"Food for thought: A fully-protected-and-updated Windows box cannot, by definition, have an uptime of more than 30 days."
"Bill Gates is so rich because he got his wish when he said: 'I wish I had a nickel for every time a PC reboots'."
"Microsoft Works." — Oxymoron
"I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said: 'Outlook not so good'. I said: 'Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway'."
"Mac users swear by their Mac,    \nPC users swear at their PC."
"'Intel Inside': The world's most widely used warning label." — Jim Hopper.
"Intel: We put the 'um...' in Pentium."
"'Intel Inside' is a Government Warning required by Law."
"The Pentium III: It's Hitler Inside !"
[windows_settings.png] Hidden Windows settings
"Q: What's the advantage of having Bill Gates and the Pope in the same city ?   \nA: So that the Pope can talk directly to God."
"Q: How many Ms programmers does it take to change a light bulb ?   \nA: 2,304. One to write WinCheckLightBulbStatus, one to write WinGripLightBulb..."
"Q: How many Bill Gates does it take to change a lightbulb ?      \nA: None, he just defines Darkness™ as the new industry standard..."
Customer: "I'm running Windows '98"    \nTech: "Yes."   \nCustomer: "My computer isn't working now."       \nTech: "Yes, you said that."
"The cost to the world of closed formats is astonishing. I can only compare companies who exploit their customers through lockin to the type of thieves who would do $2000 damage to a car in order to steal the stereo and sell it for $1000." — Ozmanjusri
"People who think MS-DOS & Windows are the slickest thing since sliced butter should be forced to wear a sign stating 'This mind intentionally left blank'."
"Print out the EULA, strike the offending paragraphs out, have it notarized, send a copy in a certified letter to Microsoft with a note saying that their signature (on delivery of letter) is acceptance of the amended terms. End of story." — BlueUnderwear.
"A Windows user spends 1/3 of his life sleeping, 1/3 working, 1/3 waiting."
"Windows: Just another pain in the glass."
"Windows isn't a virus, viruses do something."
"Difference between a virus and windows ? Viruses rarely fail."
"Computer are like air conditioners: they stop working when you open windows."
"When the grammar checker identifies an error, it suggests a correction and can even makes some changes for you." — Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 User's Guide.
"Apparently, Windows 98 is going to be renamed 'Diana, Princess of Windows'. It's overrated, overpriced, consumes loads of resources and crashes spectacularly..."
"Microsoft is trying to add some humor to it's error messages in Windows 2000. Here are a couple of examples:        \n— Printer not responding: Got a pen and paper handy ?     \n— Three things are certain in life: Taxes, death, and data loss. Guess which has just occurred ?"
"If google made $1 everytime someone used them to find an answer to a tech support question, they would own microsoft."
"Our most reliable OS yet !"*    \n(* Based on total crashes since OS release) — Microsoft disclaimer about WinXP.
"For us Windows users, reports of new security issues seem to come as often as potholes on an Arkansas highway. Like the potholes, looking for the next one isn't all that interesting or entertaining, but we still have to try to avoid them or at least minimize their impact."
"Heard of the new version of Windows from MS ? It is called CEMENT — CE+ME+NT"
"These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software on your computer." — From the EULA of a 'security update' to Windows Media Player. In other words the scariest thing I've ever read.
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
Read also this column by Dave Barry about MS-DOS and Windows.
^X^C     \nq      \nquit    \n:q       \n^C      \nend     \nx     \nexit   \nZZ     \n^D       \n^Z      \n^K^B      \n?    \nhelp      \nCounters: Page:729875, Section:11388325, Site:47721310.      \n \nComputer programming quotes
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse." — Emperor Charles V (1500—1558)
Mmmmh... What about C, C++, Fortran, Ada and Java ?
"Profanity is the one language all programmers know best."
"When someone says: 'I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done', give him a lollipop." — Buy at Amazon.comAlan J. Perlis.
"A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant." — Buy at Amazon.comAlan J. Perlis.
"I have the ability to arrange 1's and 0's in such an order that an x86 processor can actually interpret and execute those commands. It's called Computer Programming, but it's the closest that a man can ever get to giving birth in my opinion. And I somehow feel responsible for the future existence and acceptance of my "child". I'd spend hours trying to find the tiny bug that causes my child to misbehave or act strangely. But that's my mild superpower... I make the world a better place by writing mindless back-end programs that no-one will ever see nor even know that it's there. But I know; and that's all that matters." — Alucard.
"I'm taking a break from programming and trying to escape the world of geekness and then WinAmp brings up 'Norah Jones — Pointer Song' GODAMN IT LEAVE ME ALONE." — billy_s.
"Typing is no substitute for thinking." — Dartmouth Basic manual, 1964.
"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. — Nathaniel Borenstein.
"Two languages implementing the same idea must, on pain of death, use different terms." — Feldman's Law of Programming Terminology.
"It's 5.50 a.m.... Do you know where your stack pointer is ?"
C /n./: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.    — Ray Simard.
"If it wasn't for C, we'd be writing programs in BASI, PASAL, and OBOL."
"I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than eating soup with a knife."
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." — Blair P. Houghton.
"Going from programming in Pascal to programming in C, is like learning to write in Morse code." — J.P. Candusso.
"Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one." — Kernighan & Plauger, The Buy at Amazon.comElements of Programming Style.
"#define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb))" — Shakespeare
"C is not a high-level language." — Kernighan.
"Any C programmer here ? Yeah i got a C in programming class. That counts ?"
"In C expressions, you can assume that *, /, and % come before + and -. Put parentheses around everything else." — Steve Oualline, C Elements of Style.
"I will not be a lemming and follow the crowd over the cliff and into the C." — John (Jack) Beidler.
"Because we are returning a copy for postfix ++ expressions, statements such as (c++)++; won't work as expected." — Weiskamp & Flamig, The Buy at Amazon.comComplete C++ Primer.
"Evolution of the C programmer:    \n0 months to 1 month: complete beginner    \n1 month to 1 year: incomplete beginner       \n1 year to 2 years: acolyte     \n2 years to 3 years: adept       \n3 years to 8 years: expert     \nat 8 years: discovers comp.lang.c    \n8 years+: buggrit, back to beginner again !"     \n— Richard Heathfield.
"... 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.
"I've never met anyone responsible for C language code maintenance who speaks well of the C Language.
Anyone out there who LIKES to maintain C code ?" — Ted Dennison.
"C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success." — Buy at Amazon.comDennis M. Ritchie (1941-2011).
"A C program is like a fast dance on a newly waxed dance floor by people carrying razors." — Waldi Ravens.
"The C Programming Language — A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
"The more I C, the less I see."
"C programmers never die. They are just cast into void."
"A UNIX saleslady, Lenore      \nLikes work, but likes the beach more.     \nShe found a clever way     \nTo mix work with play...    \nShe sells C shells by the seashore."
"It is easier to port a shell than a shell script." — Larry Wall.
"Fixing Unix is easier than living with NT." — Jonathan Gilpin.
"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.
"I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act." — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC.
"The original Unix solved a problem and solved it well, as did the Roman numeral system, the mercury treatment for syphilis, and carbon paper."
"Confucius say: He who play in root, eventually kill tree."
"To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password."
"Unix is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully."
"19 Jan 2038 at 3:14:07 AM" — The end of the word according to Unix (232 seconds after Jan 1st 1970).
"Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are."
"UNIX: It's not just 'User-Unfriendly', it's 'Proactively User-Hostile' !"
"Programming graphics in X is like finding sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals. "
"The number of the beast — vi vi vi."
"In years past, I knew of someone who used emacs as his login shell, the only thing he found wanting in emacs was a good text editor. So he ended up using vi." — Anonymous
"VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix." — W. Davidson.
"The big difference between UNIX and VMS:     \nTo do anything on UNIX, you need to know an obscure command.          \nTo do anything on VMS, you need to know an obscure option to SET."
"Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ???" — Buy at Amazon.comRichard A. O'Keefe.
"I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." — Alan Kay, creator of Buy at Amazon.comSmalltalk.
"C++: Hard to learn and built to stay that way."
"Java is, in many ways, C++--." — Michael Feldman.
"How C++ is like teenage sex:    \nIt is on everyone's mind all the time.    \nEveryone talks about it all the time.     \nEveryone thinks everyone else is doing it.    \nAlmost no one is really doing it.   \nThe few who are doing it are: A. Doing it poorly. B. Sure it will be better next time. C. Not practicing it safely."
"C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C." — Linux Torvalds.
"Friends, much as in real life, are often more trouble than their worth." — Scott Meyers on friend functions in C++.
"Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards removed," — Bob Gray.
"Ever spend a little time reading comp.lang.c++ ? That's really the best place to learn about the number of C++ users looking for a better language." — R. William Beckwith.
"The evolution of languages: FORTRAN is a non-typed language. C is a weakly typed language. Ada is a strongly typed language. C++ is a strongly hyped language." — Ron Sercely.
"Don't include a single line in your code which you could not explain to your grandmother in a matter of two minutes. And of course... assume your grandmother is not Ada Lovelace." — Anonymous.
"PL/I and Ada started out with all the bloat, were very daunting languages, and got bad reputations (deservedly). C++ has shown that if you slowly bloat up a language over a period of years, people don't seem to mind as much." — James Hague.
"What is the object oriented way of getting rich ?     \n— Inheritance ."
"In the one and only true way. The object-oriented version of 'Spaghetti code' is, of course, 'Lasagna code'. (Too many layers)." — Roberto Waltman.
"C(++) is a write-only, high-level assembler language." — Stefan Van Baelen.
"— C++ has its place in the history of programming languages.        \n— Just as Caligula has his place in the history of the Roman Empire ?" — Robert Firth.
"C++ : Where friends have access to your private members." — Gavin Russell Baker.
"C++ would make a decent teaching language if we could teach the ++ part without the C part." — Michael B. Feldman.
"The great thing about Object Oriented code is that it can make small, simple problems look like large, complex ones."
"In C++ it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you do, you blow off your whole leg." — Buy at Amazon.comBjarne Stroustrup.
"Hybrid ('half-assed') object languages like C++ are worst of all, as they unite the simplicity of Brainfuck with the inherent security of C and the speed of Perl." — Tony.
"Cobol: Completely Obsolete Business Orientated Language."
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense." — Buy at Amazon.comE.W. Dijkstra (1930—2002).
"COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance."
"If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager."
"Shots through the Buy at Amazon.comTerminator's vision show Motorola 6502 microprocessor assembler code; the 6502 chip is the main CPU for the Apple II computer. Other code visible is written in COBOL." — From the IMDB trivia.
"COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods."
"If Python is executable pseudocode, then perl is executable line noise."
"Python's a drop-in replacement for BASIC in the sense that Optimus Prime is a drop-in replacement for a truck." — MFen.
"PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals." — Jon Ribbens.
"I'm not a real programmer. I throw together things until it works then I move on. The real programmers will say: "yeah it works but you're leaking memory everywhere. Perhaps we should fix that". I'll just restart apache every 10 requests." — Rasmus Lerdorf, author of PHP.
"If PHP was originally designed explicitly for non-programmers, does that mean you write non-programs with it ?"
"Perl 1.0: All the power of QBasic, the readability of assembly, and the flexibility of DOS batch scripting..."
"If I've got a simple task to do (eg the text-file-of-URLS example) then I knock it up in shell script. By the time that simple task has feature-creeped up to more than 20 lines I start to wish I'd written it in Perl. So I rewrite. By the time that Perl script has crept up to more than 200 lines I start to wish it was written in Python. So I rewrite. By the time that Python script has crept up to 2000 lines I start to wish I'd farmed the job out to a team of programmers, and I give up caring what language its written in and make them do it as a web service. Then I write a small shell script to call their web service. When that shell script has feature-creeped up to more than 20 lines..." — Bazman.
"Though I'll admit readability suffers slightly..." — Larry Wall (of Buy at Amazon.comPerl fame).
"Larry Wall invented Perl. If that doesn't show the mind-twisting effect that religion can have on some people, I don't know what does." — UserGogol upon learning that Buy at Amazon.comLarry Wall is Christian.
"When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass." — Buy at Amazon.comLarry Wall.
"After Perl everything else is just assembly language."
"I would rather use Java than Perl. And I'd rather be eaten by a crocodile than use Java." — Trouser.
"If I wanted plastic scissors I'd use Java. Give me my scalpel back." — JustNiz.
"Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSs is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders." — Alanna.
"I won't program in java anymore. I'm not Marxist and don't believe in classes." — phluid.
"Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language should be like. But Java applications are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like." — pixadel.
"While the PHP libraries may be a touch on the fragile and 'arbitrary' side, compared to the libraries in Java, for example, the language itself is like Miss America to Perl's Roseanne Barr." — Fnkmaster.
"Perl is like my ex-girlfriend... I used to be all over her^H^H^Hit but am now fawning over the knockout redhead Ruby. Unfortunately, I had several children with my ex that still need to be cared for — feature improvements, bugfixes, restarts. Hopefully one day they'll grow up and leave the house so Ruby can have me all to herself." — tedhiltonhead.
"Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions'. Now they have two problems." — Jamie Zawinski.
"Q: When do I need xml ?   \nA: When I need a new buzz word for my resume." — From the W3 XML page.
"Some languages are designed to solve a problem. Others are designed to prove a point." — Bell Labs saying.
"Do you program in Assembly ?" she asked. "NOP", he said.
"A developer writes an average of 6 lines of code per day for the entire project; think what you can do with 6 lines of Assembler and with 6 lines of a high level language."
"Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul." — John Carmack.
"You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers." — Buy at Amazon.comSteven Feiner.
"FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use." — Buy at Amazon.comEdsger W. Dijkstra, circa 1970.
"FORTRAN was the language of choice for the same reason that three-legged races are popular." — Ken Thompson, "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
"In the good old days physicists repeated each other's experiments, just to be sure. Today they stick to FORTRAN, so that they can share each other's programs, bugs included." — Buy at Amazon.comE.W. Dijkstra (1930—2002).
"Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice." — Sun FORTRAN Reference Manual .
"FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed — it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer." — Buy at Amazon.comAlan J. Perlis.
"You can create bad Fortran in any language."
"I am pissed off. My university's motto is 'A university for the REAL world'. And so they start off a game programming degree with six months of LISP." — TraumaPony.
"Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material." — Alan Kay.
"The problem with object-oriented languages is that they've got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you've got is a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle." — Joe Armstrong, inventor of Erlang.
"Any language that will allow you to define the number 4 as a word that places the number 3 on the stack can be a frightening weapon." — About Buy at Amazon.comForth.
"Pascal /n./ A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it."
"BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don't RETURN."
"Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC after reaching puberty."
"When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under it while the first legion marched across. If programmers today worked under similar ground rules, they might well find themselves getting much more interested in Ada !" — Robert Dewar, President Ada Core Technologies.
"Q: If anyone knows of a book that is the functional equivalent of 'The Idiot's Guide to C' for the Ada language, please send me the title and author.     \nA: Idiots don't use Ada. Idiots only use C or derivations." — David Weller.
"Epigram: Ada is the 400-pound gorilla of programming languages."
"The problem about all graphical programming languages is that when your project becomes complex, not only will you have spaghetti code, but it will actually look like spaghetti too."
"They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." — Olav Mjelde.
"'Always apply the latest updates' and 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' are the two rules of system administration..."
"If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in."
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." — Buy at Amazon.comCharles Babbage.
"Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence." — Buy at Amazon.comEdsger W. Dijkstra.
"At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer."
"1. That can't happen     \n2. That doesn't happen on my machine    \n3. That shouldn't happen     \n4. Why does that happen ?        \n5. Oh, I see       \n6. How did that ever work ?" — The Six Stages of Debugging.
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem you encounter resembles a nail."
"System Error: press F13 to continue..."
"99 little bugs in the code.    \n99 little bugs in the code.     \nTake one down, patch it around.   \n127 little bugs in the code..."
"To err is human, but for a real disaster you need a computer."
"Some developers, when encountering a problem, say: 'I know, I'll use floating-point numbers !' Now, they have 1.9999999997 problems."
"I got .99999999 problems, and a float ain't one."
"My computer NEVER loc
"Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes."
"If it works, leave it alone — there's no need to understand it. If it fails, try to fix it — there's no time to understand it." — Bill Pfeifer.
"I have a friend who told me that the very best computer system ever built by mankind was by the Druids at Stonehenge. Well, that's an old story. But what I liked was that he felt the Druids didn't die out, they just went bankrupt trying to debug the software." — J. Finke.
"Assumption is the mother of all fuckups." — Anonymous.
"It's not that I'm surrounded by incompetence that bothers me, it's that I fit in so well."
"Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning."
"I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!" — Vidiu Platon.
"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 W. Kernighan.
"We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer — and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply." — Tom Van Vleck.
"...In fact, never ever use gets() or sprintf(), period. If you do we will send evil dwarfs after you." — FreeBSD Secure Programming Guidelines.
"The combination of threads, remote-procedure-call interfaces, and heavyweight object-oriented design is especially dangerous... if you are ever invited onto a project that is supposed to feature all three, fleeing in terror might well be an appropriate reaction." — Eric Raymond, "The Art of Unix Programming".
"The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit."
"Would you rather Test-First, or Debug-Later ?" — Robert Martin .
"Don't worry, we have plenty of time to get the Nuclear Missile Launch program Y2K compliant, besides, I always code better after a few drinks."
"Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code."
"Who is this 'General Failure' and why is he reading my disk ?"
"Programmers and old people have a lot in common. We're both always looking for ways to control leaks and dumps." — Ralf.
"hAS aNYONE sEEN MY cAPSLOCK kEY ?"
"It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa."
"It is twice as difficult to debug a program as to write it. Therefore, if you put all of your creativity and effort into writing the program, you are not smart enough to debug it."
"We have a bug that occurs on the 31st of a month so once a month we get a bug report. It gets assigned to a developer within 24 hours who then fiddles for a bit before marking it 'unable to reproduce'." — kosh.
"I'm in the computer business, I make Out-Of-Order signs. "
"Kevorkian Virus: helps your computer shut down whenever it wants to."
"Error, no keyboard — press F1 to continue."
"Cannot delete tmp150---3.tmp: There is not enough free disk space. Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again."
"File not found. Should I fake it ? (Y/N)"
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." — Buy at Amazon.comDonald E. Knuth.
"The first manned space flight had a computer on board to control re-entry, but it was basic in the extreme, and locked so Comrade Gagarin couldn't tamper with it. An envelope with the code to unlock the computer was hidden somewhere in the capsule, and should an emergency arise, ground control would tell him where it was."
"When all else fails, read the instructions." — L. Iasellio.
"Computer system analysis is like child-rearing; you can do grievous damage, but you cannot ensure success." — Buy at Amazon.comTom DeMarco.
"As currently implemented, the etime function fails across month and year boundaries. Since etime is an M-file, you can modify the code to work across these boundaries if needed." — Found in the Buy at Amazon.comMatlab documentation. You mean to tell me I should pay several hundred $ for code that doesn't even work, but 'fortunately' I can modify it myself to make it work !?! Thanks but I'll stick to Octave.
"The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children." — Buy at Amazon.comLinus Torvalds.
"When in doubt, use brute force." — Ken Thompson.
"If brute force doesn't solve your problems, then you aren't using enough."
"The definition of an upgrade: Take old bugs out, put new ones in."
"Evolution is God's way of issuing upgrades."
"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. " — Nathaniel Borenstein.
"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers." — Larry Niven.
"The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back."
"Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs." — Buy at Amazon.comKernighan.
"If it's not on fire, it's a software problem."
"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." — Martin Golding.
"Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle." — Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programmers.
"Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code." — Christopher Thompson.
"My software never has bugs. It just develops random features."
"The only difference between a bug and a feature is the documentation."
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you're providing support for a lifetime." — Michael Sinz.
"There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works." — Buy at Amazon.comAlan J. Perlis.
"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.
"A one-question geek test. If you get the joke, you're a geek: Seen on a California license plate on a VW Beetle: 'FEATURE'..." — Joshua D. Wachs, Natural Intelligence Inc.
"Q: How can you tell an extroverted computer geek from an introverted computer geek ?    \nA: The introverted computer geek will look at his shoes while he talks to you. The extroverted computer geek will look at your shoes while he talks to you."
"Q: How do you tell if an extroverted computer geek is Russian ?      \nA: His shoes look at you while he is talking."
"To work on a program with the compiler in debug mode and then to sell it compiling it without the debug option is like learning to swim with floaters and then taking them off to swim across the Atlantic." — My C professor.
"I hope the Q-Tips in that 500 count box I bought last night are Year 2000 compliant, 'cause it'll take me at least three years to get through them all." — Mark Mundy.
"It's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages."
"As an ultimate incentive to solve the millennium bug computer problem, China has ordered its airline executives to take a flight on January 1, 2000." — The Financial Times.
"It's 11:59 on December 31 1999. In two minutes time, are you gonna be glad you don't have a bank account ?"