My Favorite Programming Quotes

Every profession has their own “inside” jokes. Those which only others in their industry can relate to and understand. Here are some programming quotes I’ve come across I’ve enjoyed:

“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”

-Martin Goldin

My all-time favorite. I try to remember this every time I check code in.

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems.

-Jamie Zawinski

I would say most engineers fall into this category. We implement a clever, fancy solution to an existing issue and all is good. Except when we have to update the solution and have no idea what we did in the first place.

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

-Edsger Dijkstra

Funny at first, but quickly sombering it is kind of true..

Nine people can’t make a baby in a month.

-Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month

An important concept most people in software development overlook. When a critical issue arises, many believe the solution is simply throwing more “programmers” at the problem to solve it faster. Which often ends up causing more issues and prolongs the crisis.

Some tasks are just “serial” in nature (they have to be completed in a certain order) and should be addressed as such.

The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.

-Anonymous

Hahaha! I love it.