Favorite Programming Quotes

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
Tom Cargill

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Larry Wall

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
Bill Gates

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

Once a new technology starts rolling, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.
Stewart Brand

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut

The hardest part of design … is keeping features out.
Donald Norman

Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable.
Ralph Johnson

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

Software and cathedrals are much the same - first we build them, then we pray.
Anonymous Preacher

The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we’ve finished building it.
Anonymous Consultant

The software isn’t finished until the last user is dead.
Anonymous Support Group Member

Better train people and risk they leave - than do nothing and risk they stay.
Anonymous Technical Trainer

Programming is 10% science, 20% ingenuity, and 70% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.
Anonymous Scientist

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Anonymous Hack Actor

Bad code isn’t bad, its just misunderstood.
Anonymous Code Behaviorist

It is easier to measure something than to understand what you have measured.
Anonymous Analyst

The sooner you get behind in your work, the more time you have to catch up.
Anonymous Scheduler

When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.
Anonymous Linguist

Benchmarks don’t lie, but liars do benchmarks.
Anonymous Tester

Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over?
Anonymous Code Monkey

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53 Comments so far

  1. Leif Thande on August 17th, 2008

    Edsger Dijkstra’s quote is there twice, so is the “do it over” quote.

  2. TechKnow on August 17th, 2008

    @Leif - Thanks for that. I guess I liked those quotes so much that I inadvertently added them twice.

  3. vishwajeet singh on August 18th, 2008

    Nice collection :)

  4. Ignacio Coloma on August 18th, 2008

    I cannot remember where I read it, even after googling:

    “The only feature you don’t debug is the one you don’t implement in the first place”

  5. Per Trangbæk on August 18th, 2008

    “life is just another example of bad programming”

  6. […] Favorite Programming Quotes If you can remember some of these quotes you can trot them out at the right time and seem better read than you really are […]

  7. Robert on August 18th, 2008

    One from Martin Fowler - “The opposite of a testable design is a detestable design”

  8. Ashley on August 19th, 2008

    I’m a programmer, and i want to change the world, but they just won’t give me the source code.

  9. From vBharat.com » Favorite Programming Quotes…

    Favorite Programming Quotes: If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in….

  10. Paul on August 19th, 2008

    “measure twice, cut once” - steve mconnel

  11. Saul Pwanson on August 19th, 2008

    Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction — from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn’t work.
    (author unknown)

  12. Asterisk IP telephony on August 20th, 2008

    Great collection.
    A bug always lies in the programmer eyes :)

  13. […] Favorite Programming Quotes The hardest part of design … is keeping features out. Donald Norman (tags: programming) […]

  14. Internetbug on August 20th, 2008

    User’s point of view: each and every feature of a program hardly achieved by a programmer is useless. The smallest con is an unsortable obstacle.

    And maybe the surprisingly missing quote here: “A program is not perfect: no one has found its bugs yet.

  15. Phil Cassel on August 20th, 2008

    “The only time I was wrong was when I thought I was wrong.”

  16. adam on August 20th, 2008

    If you think about it, Tom Cargill was a total moron. Logically his statement makes no sense. Nothing can consume 180 percent development time. I think what Tom wanted to say was that, 90 percent of code accounts for 10 percent of development time, and 10 percent of code accounts for 90 percent of development time. I know in my case, that I get away with murder because my peers have no clue what it takes to accomplish the tasks that I am given. Granted Ive become more managerial, but still, my development role takes little effort. Praise nerds!!

  17. Rasputin on August 21st, 2008

    Now adam is the moron…

  18. Edoardo on August 22nd, 2008

    What about the good old one:

    “God is Real, unless declared Integer”

  19. web design company on August 23rd, 2008

    this is my favorite quote
    The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.
    Tom Cargill

    but this one has to be the funniest
    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

  20. Tester on August 23rd, 2008

    Quality Engineers pride themselves on professional paranoia.

  21. Alejandro U. Alvarez on August 23rd, 2008

    So true and well said!
    But yet again, what would be programming if we did the code perfect the first time?
    There would be no “lovely” debugging, or no thinking over and over the same thing, just to find a misplaced ;

    Great blog, keep it up

  22. JR on August 25th, 2008

    Here is a new one.

    “The quality of the code is independent of whether it works or not.” Jeff Esposito

  23. Jan Wedekind on August 26th, 2008

    Cheap, fast, reliable. Choose two.

  24. Calvin on August 26th, 2008

    “To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.”

    I have no idea who coined that, but its definitely my favorite quote of all time.

  25. Kamal on August 28th, 2008

    I think there’s a mistake in the first one.

    The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 10 percent of the development time…

  26. oz on August 29th, 2008

    “The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time…The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.”

    I dont think there’s a mistake with this one, it actually means that u’ll go over time by 80 percent

  27. Crazy Ivan on August 29th, 2008

    “Removing the copy-paste function from all major IDEs would spare the humanity from 90% of all bugs in computer software.”

    Can’ t remember where i read it. :/

    And no, there is no mistake in the first one, it implies that software projects never finish on time therefore taking 180% time.

  28. […] From a nice list of programming quotes. […]

  29. creaothceann on August 29th, 2008

    adam:
    The time after the first 100% is when you’ve passed the first deadline.

  30. Matt on August 29th, 2008

    My fave is the Larry Wall “three virtues” quote.

    BTW Adam, you’ve totally missed the joke.

  31. Anon on August 29th, 2008

    “Programming is like sex — one mistake and you end up supporting it for the rest of your life.”

  32. BioTronic on August 29th, 2008

    Oh gods, don’t any of you understand that the 90% 90% quote means that you will always use more time than you planned?

  33. josh on August 29th, 2008

    People… Cargill’s quote is supposed to be funny, not a literal calculation of project time.

  34. Gunner on August 29th, 2008

    “A programmer spends 50% of his time fixing bugs, and the other 50% creating them.”

    - Chris McGrath

  35. Dan on August 29th, 2008

    Calvin, your recursion quote is my least favourite ;)

    It makes me angry since it is clearly an example of an infinite loop rather than recursion.

  36. […] Selected Computer Quotes (tags: toread programming geek humor software coding list nerd quotes) […]

  37. ohiit on September 4th, 2008

    Very nice. I love it. Just stumbleUpon it. I used to be a programmer now I dunno why I hate it. Please advise me how can I get back to coding program. I think my programming skill just suck big time after not having touched it for almost 3 years but I know that programming is such a headache. But it is actually a form of art with a creative mind blended together. To be brutal honest programming makes me so fustrated after all the debugging code when I used to be a newbie programmer.

  38. swampsparrow on September 5th, 2008

    If programmers would spend as much time programming as they do coming up with cleaver quotes… hmmm, I guess we’d still be in a mess. :)

  39. Cyril Gupta on September 5th, 2008

    God’s a great programmer, but a lousy debugger.

  40. quantcoder on September 5th, 2008

    Great collection, personally i like this phase “Software and cathedrals are much the same - first we build them, then we pray.” as a programmer, i dont think this is totally ture but sometimes i do pray after implementation. LOL.

  41. Vijay Dev on September 6th, 2008

    All the quotes are nice !

  42. Eric Filson on September 8th, 2008

    The art of programming is finding patterns where others see only chaos -Me

  43. Roberto on September 9th, 2008

    Really great collection!
    I’m gonna share it with my colleagues.
    Many of them are absolutely true.
    Ciao!

  44. anonymous on September 10th, 2008

    >>BTW Adam, you’ve totally missed the joke.
    You know why he is a manager now!!

  45. […] sono un grande esperto di programazione, ma trovandomi su questo sito trovato con StumbleUpon non ho potuto fare ameno di notare queste fantastiche citazioni sulla […]

  46. Kat on September 15th, 2008

    >>Alejandro Alvarez wrote:
    >>”But yet again, what would be programming if we did the code perfect the first time?
    There would be no “lovely” debugging, or no thinking over and over the same thing, just to find a misplaced ;”

    As a beginning programmer, I totally agree and identify with this…many is the time I’ve sat there thinking about why my code didn’t work, when I end up realizing there’s that errant little semicolon at the end of a line where it doesn’t belong.

    >>Jan Wedekind wrote:
    >>”Cheap, fast, reliable. Choose two.”

    Actually, while this quote is mostly true, and quite hilarious, on a more serious note, ‘Cheap, Fast and Reliable,’ are actually three adjectives I could easily use to describe Ubuntu Linux. But then again, I’m in love with Linux for the same reasons I despise Win(blows): Security, browser speed and source code availability. ;-) Granted, not all my favorite Windows games and programs have been recreated or ported to Linux–Sims 2 for example, but by Goddess I ADORE open-source programming, so if I want to play Sims 2–I just go play it on Playstation 2. ;-)

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