Nuggets of wisdom?

Question

There are many quotes from famous computer scientists that have become the wisdom that guides our profession. For example:

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil in programming."

• Donald Knuth (citing Hoare's Dictum)

"Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?"

• Brian Kernighan

And so on. My question is, what are your favorite words of wisdom about programming from someone who is not famous? Was it a friend, a coworker, or a teacher, or a family member?

For example, a technical writer friend of mine said:

"You can't get the right answers unless you ask the right questions."

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Thanks for all the contributions! The answer I selected was (a) specifically coding-related, and (b) stated by someone who is not technically famous (though he has a popular blog and a podcast and runs StackOverflow). I.e. he's no Bill Gates or Yogi Berra.

Answer 1

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=programming+quotes

And in honor of our fearless leader....

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000855.html

Answer 2

Programming is hard, let's go shopping!

Answer 3

Bugs? My code doesn't have bugs. It has randomly generated, undocumented features!

Answer 4

To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

Answer 5

Can't remember where I heard it, must have been during some tech talk I've watched sometime before.

Regardless of how smart, creative, and innovative your organization is, there are more smart, creative, and innovative people outside your organization than inside.

Encourages open source work, peer review, reminds me not to try and reinvent the wheel.

Also:

Every single time I have been clever I have regretted it.

Can't remember who told this one either.

Answer 6

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

Answer 7

Always make sure the shower curtain is on the inside.

Answer 8

"The software will ship in July, we just don't know of what year."

Answer 9

Never be afraid to say "I don't understand".

Answer 10

Another classic: "640K is Enough For Anyone".

Althought the quote is not verified, and probably wrong, it is a significant portion of computer science history.

Answer 11

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I’ll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. --Jamie Zawinski

Answer 12

An of course Murphy's law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at the worst possible moment."

Answer 13

Not directly development-related, but true all the same...

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Answer 14

ILLEGITIMI NON CARBORUNDUM

Answer 15

In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

Damn, beat to the punch, I should read these threads first.

Answer 16

Don't know whether it is not famous, but it is good advice anyway.

make it work, make it pretty, make it fast

Answer 17

"The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time."

(Tom Cargill)

Because it is scarily true!

Answer 18

The much underrated:

"If you build it, they will come"

(Field of dreams?)

Answer 19

I Believe Jeff Atwood said it

Code doesn't exist until it's checked into source control.

I've lost so much interesting software that I've written over the years simply because I never had a system of storing it. Over the last 2 years, I've made sure that just about every thing, including scripts that I've written, have been stored under source control.

Answer 20

"Fast, good, cheap: pick any two."

Answer 21

Another one of my favourites is from Larry Osterman:

One in a million is next Tuesday

Basically what he meant was computers operate at such high speeds, with so many people using one system, that even bugs that occur only once in a million, still come up quite frequently.

Answer 22

My bit o' wisdom would be this: Don't fix what ain't broke.

Answer 23

I saw a quote on here about an app. "Software by Stephen King, Interface by Salvador Dali"

Answer 24

I don't believe in documentation; if it was hard to write, it should be hard to read. Why do you think they call it "code"?

Answer 25

A computer is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it. -- Paraphrased from Tom Lehrer

Answer 26

If you don't understand the problem you're trying to solve, writing more code will only make it worse.

Answer 27

A hard problem is seldom worth solving.

Meaning that if it seems hard you should spend time making it simple: either by understanding it better, by rephrasing it or by limiting (or extending) the scope.

Answer 28

Here's something i came up with one day:

You can't have just madness, you have to have a method to the madness.

Answer 29

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

(Sadly, I've never seen WAR IS PEACE to apply particularly well in computing.)

Answer 30

Whenever someone says something like "in theory, this should work..." I sometimes reply with this:

In theory, theory and practice is the same.

I don't recall where it's from, or even if I made it up myself (in that case I probably wasn't the first to come up with it).

Answer 31

Don't try to build multi-threaded application in the languages that aren't designed for it.

Answer 32

"i m the best programmer in the world."

Answer 33

Trying is the first step towards failure
--Homer Simpson

This has been proven almost every time we try out a new technology at work.

Answer 34

In my very first computer science class in college, the professor said, If you remember only one thing from this class, remember these two things:

A computer does what you tell it to do, not what you want it to do.

and

The IQ of a computer is zero.

Answer 35

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

Answer 36

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -Einstein

This is my usual answer as to why I don’t want to attend another meeting where no decision making will occur.

Answer 37

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein

Answer 38

Stupid should hurt.

Meaning if you got immediate feed back for making that bone-headed mistake, you'd stop.

Answer 39

I think it's a book title.

Learn to program in c++ in just 10 years.

It captures the idea that programming is not something you jump into, and getting good takes a long long time. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool, IMHO.

Answer 40

Check out my site: http://www.SoftwareQuotes.com - it has an excellent selection of quotations about software development.

Some quotes:

"The software isn't finished until the last user is dead." - Anonymous

"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program is its own hell." - Geoffrey James

Answer 41

"It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan

Answer 42

"Nothing works until you try it." -- me

Assume everything is broken until verified.

Used in response to questions like, "If we combine feature X and feature Y in a way we've never done before, will it work?" and "Do we handle generic absurd but catastrophic error condition?"

Discovered after spending a week at a remote customer site implementing a clever use of our product I thought should work but didn't verify. We committed it to the customer, it didn't work, so I spent a week in a warehouse in Kansas City implementing said feature.

Answer 43

"NOTHING is more important in a database than integrity."

from my friend Eric

"The whole idea of doing this opens up a huge can of Pandora's box" (not specifically IT related but too much fun not to include)

"Crap...I hate it when I drop the wrong table"

from my former boss

Answer 44

Be very careful at what you type into Google Images.

Answer 45

"Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance" -- My old boss.

Answer 46

"Don`t test what you are not prepared to fix"

Answer 47

"Do it right the first time (Bertrand Serlet)"

...meaning, don't hack something together which works mostly, but apply proper engineering. Everything else requires more effort in the future.

Answer 48

What I usually end up telling my colleagues

• Stop assuming the code is wrong just because you are not the author of it.

What I usually end up telling my boss:

• The urgent is done. The indispensable is in progress. For miracles, please forecast some delay.

Answer 49

None of us is as dumb as all of us.

Answer 50

I can't believe these weren't already here:

Garbage in, garbage out

and

Know Thy Data

finally

To err is human, to really foul up requires a computer

Answer 51

"Measure twice, cut once" - good philosophy for any discipline...

Answer 52

"Think big, act small, fail fast; learn rapidly"

Answer 53

I was talking to a guy about Object Oriented Programming, and added:

Just because it's made out of car parts, doesn't mean it's a car.

It promptly was entered into Bugzilla's Quips.

Answer 54

A favorite when trying to make a decision.

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Answer 55

Programming is communication. Communication is not programming.

-- Myself.

Here's an explanation (spoiler alert?) for those that might find it difficult to grok exactly what this phrase is suppose to mean:

The first part of this phrase is butt naked and means exactly what is says. When we write code - good code, that is - we are communicating ideas and intent, data and process. Not only are we communicating this information to our compiler, but also to our colleagues, the next guy who is going to maintain that code and to our (near) future self.

The second part; "communication is not programming," is a bit deeper and is about communicating with living people, and how different that is from communicating with a compiler. Human languages are full of ambiguity, and often require multiple different explanations before a point or idea comes across clearly. Communicating with people require "people communication." Further, people are not computers. When you ask a person to do something, they will probably not do exactly what you asked. They may do less or they may do more. They may even do something completely different, or what amounts to nothing of value (to you). Not because they are bad, but because they are people.

Answer 56

Don't de-reference dangling pointers.

Answer 57

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

--E. W. Dijkstra

Answer 58

"Question your assumptions"

Answer 59

At a polytechnic they teach you to wash your hands after going for a piss, at university they teach you not to piss on your hands.

Answer 60

At least two. They are more physics, rather than computer science:

"if you always follow the minimum energy path, you are guaranteed that your potential will only decrease" - Me

"When you work in a vacuum, it's easy to fill the room" - Zachary Spencer, here on SO

Answer 61

Being really good at C++ is like being really good at using rocks to sharpen sticks. — Thant Tessman

Answer 62

It's maybe a bit obvious, but one of my lecturers in college pointed this out, and it's stuck with me:-

"If your code compiles, you've written a program. But this doesn't mean that it's the program that you think you've written".

This guy was big on formal proofs...

Answer 63

"All of Microsoft's software is written in Visual Basic" -- My IT teacher

haha.

Answer 64

If you can't test it, then you don't need it.

Referring to source code. If it doesn't have a testable result, then you might as well use a null statement.

This is particularly true of error handling code. If the error condition can't be created, why try to handle it?

Answer 65

My all-time favourite has to be Hofstadter's Law:

It will take longer than you think, even if you take Hofstadter's Law into account.

:)

Answer 66

"For every problem there is a solution which is simple neat and wrong"

Answer 67

Question: What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?

Answer: I don't know and I don't care. ;)

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Synopsis: You can't help someone who is both ignorant and apathetic at the same time, so don't waste your energy.

Answer 68

We've made a deal with God:

• He doesn't program,
• we don't make miracles.

Answer 69

"I think most application development involves initial lack of understanding of how to use a particular technology optimally, followed by a downward spiral of workarounds and short cuts" - A developer friend of mine

Answer 70

Even though the compiler doesn't have a GUI, it still is beautiful.

-- me

Always have a healthy disrespect of the impossible

-- unknown

Answer 71

"This project is scheduled to be done when hell freezes over. But it may slip." - Keith Reynolds

Answer 72

"El flojo trabaja dos veces" -my friend's Colombian mother

Spanish for, "The lazy person works twice." Applicable to everything.

Answer 73

From "Tips: Ten tips for being happier.":

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

For a mountain of wisdom take a look at some of the posts on "Sources of Insight".

Answer 74

"I don't care how did you do it. It has to work."

My friend told me that when I created a tiny report for him 10 years ago. But It is not what he exactly told me but meaning was same.

Answer 75

It certainly is famous, but shouldn't be left unlisted:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Answer 76

Keep it simple stupid! (KISS Principle)

Don't over engineer nor over design the problem you're trying to solve, keep it simple and elegant.

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Don't repeat yourself (DRY Principle)

Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system. Never copy and paste code either.

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Making progress

Do something every day towards your project, whatever you do now you won't have to do later. Seems obvious but it really helps you move forward on your projects.