What's your favourite quote about programming? [closed]

Question

What's your favourite quote about programming?

One quote per answer, and please check for duplicates before posting!

Answer 1

Not really about programming, but...

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
  — Jack London

Answer 2

There is always one more bug.
  — Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology

Answer 3

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

-- Albert Einstein (for me, via Scott Myers). Emphasis added.

Answer 4

Kurzfristige Hacks tendieren dazu, langfristige Lösungen zu werden.
  — Bodo Tasche

Translated: Current hacks tend to be long-term solutions.

Answer 5

A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.
  — Dennis M. Ritchie

Answer 6

“ Copy and paste is a design error. ” -- David Parnas

Answer 7

Write once, debug everywhere.

Answer 8

I abhor a system designed for the "user," if that word is a coded pejorative meaning "stupid and unsophisticated."

Ken Thompson

Answer 9

Debugging is like farting — it's not so bad when it's your own code.

Answer 10

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
  — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Answer 11

My favourites have already been posted, so here's something I thought of one day at work:

In Soviet Russia, exception throws YOU!!

Answer 12

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.
  — Fred Brooks, "No Silver Bullet"

Answer 13

From my first programming class (FORTRAN IV):

What is a computer?
It it a box with a little man in it.
This man is blazing fast. He can do millions of instructions per second.
But he is myopic. He's so myopic that he can see only one instruction at a time.
He's also not very smart, he'll attempt to do exactly what you tell him to do.

This has become the base of my philosophy of programming and debugging.

Answer 14

2 + 2 = 5, for sufficiently large values of 2.

— Anon

Answer 15

Software is hard.

-- Donald Knuth

Answer 16

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

-My c# Teacher (not sure where he heard it from!)

Answer 17

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.

--William Cowper

Answer 18

Well, not my favorite but...

If it is not broken, don't fix it

Answer 19

It works on my machine

Answer 20

/* You are not expected to understand this. */

Comment in Sixth Edition Unix.

Answer 21

Fail Quickly

--Unknown

Answer 22

Let me re-assert that the question of whether there are limitations in principle of what problems man can make machines solve for him as compared to his own ability to solve problems, really is a technical question in recursive function theory.

— John McCarthy

Answer 23

In Hebrew there's a saying (mostly by army conscripted programmers):

באג בדיזיין -> זין בדיבאג

Which is an anagram, and it roughly translates to

Bugs in the design -> you're f^#ked while debugging

Answer 24

If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

—Supposedly from "Murphy's Laws"; see here

Although I can do plenty of things without any pressure (like post answers here), I need a hint of fear to do what I'm supposed to be doing (like my homework).

Answer 25

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

Answer 26

It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.

-- Steve McConnell

Answer 27

Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.

-- Anonymous

Answer 28

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}

Answer 29

It would seem that perfection is attained not when no more can be added, but when no more can be removed.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Answer 30

to understand recursion you must first understand recursion