[HN Gopher] Programming quotes
___________________________________________________________________
Programming quotes
Author : tosh
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-03-25 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ronaldsvilcins.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ronaldsvilcins.com)
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Java is to JavaScript what Car is to Carpet.
|
| It's goes deeper than it should Cars usually ship with small
| patches of carpet. From Java 8 until 15, Java shipped with a JS
| interpreter. It was actually the only JSON parser I know of that
| shipped with Java.
| ppierald wrote:
| Math is hard. Programming is hard.
| petercooper wrote:
| I've been running a Twitter account hoovering up and
| regurgitating such things for the past ten years as well:
| https://twitter.com/codewisdom
| anthropodie wrote:
| > "Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than
| spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code." -
| Christopher Thompson
|
| Liked your feed. Followed.
| ollran wrote:
| There was an account posting SICP quotes as well.
| https://twitter.com/SICPQuotes
| dehrmann wrote:
| > There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and
| UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
|
| I heard it as the much funnier "LSD and BSD."
| coldtea wrote:
| Funnier AND more accurate. UNIX came out of AT&T. The BSD
| variant came out of Berkeley.
| FarProfessor wrote:
| "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like
| measuring aircraft building progress by weight." - yup!
| zaat wrote:
| I don't see how this misses anything, weight as progress
| criteria isn't wrong because of assembly time but due to the
| effect of added weight
| swader999 wrote:
| I'm stealing this one.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This misses something, though. The problem with lines of code
| isn't that it discounts assembly time, it's that it rewards
| complexity.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The point of the analogy is that both metrics are,
| fundamentally, useless. A 787 (unloaded) weighs about 175
| tons. Does this mean that putting 175 tons of material at the
| end of the assembly line corresponds to the complete and
| proper assembly of a 787? Nope. There are other far more
| useful measures: does it look right, is it fitted correctly,
| does it pass QA (testing), is it composed of the correct
| pieces or just things that resemble them?
|
| In software, LOC is, itself, a useless measure for progress
| for the same reason: It indicates nothing of value. I have
| inherited programs in the 10s and 100s of thousands of lines
| of code that I was able to reduce to less than 20% of their
| initial size without loss of capability, and generally with
| improved performance, stability, and maintainability. The
| right measures are around functionality and the other
| meaningful qualities (stability, security, testability,
| etc.).
| jandrese wrote:
| Reminds me of another quote:
|
| "Software ended up saving the Defense Aerospace industry. It
| was the only way of adding cost that didn't also add weight."
| swader999 wrote:
| I clicked on this thinking I'd find tips on programming quotes.
| goatcode wrote:
| Djikstra is the king of smarmy CS quotes.
| COil wrote:
| Don't mock everything, by mocking everything, you are testing...
| nothing.
| sethammons wrote:
| I love this. I can't count how many cases I've come across
| where at the end of the day, you assert that 1=1 because all
| that is happening is mocks being passed around and you assert
| that your mock is your mock.
| toast0 wrote:
| Mocking everything is mocking testing?
| alexf95 wrote:
| This looks like it would be heaven for my software engineering
| professor. I swear he had smart Computer Science quotes on every
| second slide of his presentations.
| cilefen wrote:
| It would be an improvement to curate more diversity in this
| pantheon.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| what does this even mean?
| me_me_me wrote:
| Do you have any entry proposal(s) or you are just complaining
| without a solution?
|
| edit: typo
| petercooper wrote:
| I'm not the original commenter, but I have some:
|
| "To me programming is more than an important practical art.
| It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of
| knowledge." - Grace Hopper
|
| "Beyond basic mathematical aptitude, the difference between
| good programmers and great programmers is verbal ability." -
| Marissa Mayer
|
| "I've always objected to doing anything over again if I had
| already done it once." - Grace Hopper
|
| "The best icons are more like traffic signs than graphic
| illustrations." - Susan Kare
|
| "You haven't mastered a tool until you understand when it
| should not be used." - Kelsey Hightower
|
| "Some problems solve themselves if you are patient enough." -
| Jaana Dogan
|
| "If too many users are wrong, it's probably your fault [..]
| If a bunch of people trip over the same thing, maybe it's not
| them. Maybe it's your product, or maybe it's just you." -
| Rachel Kroll
|
| "Falling in love with code means falling in love with problem
| solving and being a part of a forever ongoing conversation."
| - Kathryn Barrett
|
| "The best programs are the ones written when the programmer
| is supposed to be working on something else." - Melinda
| Varian
|
| "Writing software as if we are the only person that ever has
| to comprehend it is one of the biggest mistakes and false
| assumptions that can be made." - Karolina Szczur
|
| "Sometimes it's better to leave something alone, to pause,
| and that's very true of programming." - Joyce Wheeler
|
| "The purpose of software engineering is to control
| complexity, not to create it." - Dr. Pamela Zave
| me_me_me wrote:
| >"The purpose of software engineering is to control
| complexity, not to create it." - Dr. Pamela Zave
|
| That's a really good advice
| Jtsummers wrote:
| http://www.pamelazave.com/
|
| Her homepage and a lot of writings. Very good resource if
| you've not been there before.
| cilefen wrote:
| "Hey, we're engineering too" - Margaret Hamilton, coining
| the term "Software Engineering"
| vram22 wrote:
| That's a great one. If only it were followed in reality
| instead of in the breach.
| cilefen wrote:
| "They told me computers could only do arithmetic" is
| attributed to Grace Hopper.
| temporallobe wrote:
| Clicked the link expecting to see something by Larry Wall, was
| not disappointed.
|
| One of the things I loved about learning Perl was his many quips
| of humor and wisdom sprinkled throughout the "camel" books,
| particularly The Perl Cookbook, which is still on my bookshelf to
| this day.
| vram22 wrote:
| Same opinion here.
|
| His humor was unbeatable in quality, quantity (sometimes
| multiple jokes per page) and sometimes even subtlety, not to
| mention unexpectedness (which is a key criterion of a joke
| being funny).
|
| Sample: From a Perl FAQ, IIRC (there are many):
|
| Q: Is Perl (ANSI) certified? Larry: A: I'll be certified before
| Perl is!
| nchelluri wrote:
| Love this. That PHP one is a little unnecessarily harsh though.
| anotherevan wrote:
| https://q4td.blogspot.com/search/label/programming
| [deleted]
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I've always liked:
|
| "Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything.
| One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot
| tell whether or not they are working simply by looking at them.
| Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and
| gossiping, or just staring into space. What the programmer is
| trying to do is get a handle on all the individual and unrelated
| ideas that are scampering around in his head."
|
| -- Charles M Strauss
| vram22 wrote:
| That's why PHB managers want bums in seats.
|
| And the more the merrier, for their perceived status, too. As a
| consultant, I've literally come across project managers, at
| least in India, who measure their "prestige" by the number of
| devs "under" them.
| sbayeta wrote:
| Oh this what I've been trying to explain my wife for years! And
| every time she rolls her eyes probably thinking that I'm
| slacking...
|
| I'll show it to her and see if it helps
| unnouinceput wrote:
| " Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer.
| There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
| Larry Wall"
|
| I'm offended by how accurate this quote describes me.
| kragen wrote:
| You may be interested in the context, which is excerpted in
| Wiki: http://wiki.c2.com/?LazinessImpatienceHubris=
|
| _Laziness_
|
| The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall
| energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs
| that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote
| so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence,
| the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book.
| See also impatience and hubris. (p.609)
|
| _Impatience_
|
| The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes
| you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but
| actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the
| second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and
| hubris. (p.608)
|
| _Hubris_
|
| Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the
| quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other
| people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third
| great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.
| (p.607)
|
| ***
|
| So, if that describes you, you should be very proud indeed.
| jfengel wrote:
| That's not a definition of hubris that Aristotle would
| recognize. It's closer to Time and Arete.
| kragen wrote:
| That's not even 0.1% of the things Larry Wall disagrees
| with Aristotle about.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I thought the Kernighan quote went more along the lines of
| "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."
|
| Anyone have a source on this one way or the other?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| writing code as cleverly as possible doesn't imply it's at the
| developers limit of understanding--just that the code cannot be
| expressed more cleverly.
|
| Asking the question, how will you ever debug it, causes the
| developer pause and hopefully realize there will be a learning
| curve when maintenance dues come.
|
| I guess I disagree with the conclusion of your flavor of the
| quote.
| yakubin wrote:
| It seems yours is the more widely-known phrasing of it, which
| however was not the original. According to [1], it comes from
| "The Elements of Programming Style", where it was worded the
| way it's quoted in the article.
|
| [1]: <https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws#kernighans-law>
| keithalewis wrote:
| Ronalds Vilcins did his homework. He also gives Stroustrup's
| original quote.
| kragen wrote:
| Hmm, I haven't read that book this millennium, but I had
| thought I first encountered the quote in _The Practice of
| Programming_. Which, I mean, I also haven 't read this
| millennium, but when I did read it it was after _The Elements
| of Programming Style_. I guess I should check...
|
| It turns out that it _is_ in _The Elements of Programming
| Style_ , on the second page of Chapter 2, "Expression", in
| the second edition:
|
| _Suppose that you were trying to teach a novice programmer
| how to count the blanks in a string. How would you do it?
| Surely not by this elegant but mystifying method [omitted] --
| instead you would say "Look at each character, and if it 's a
| blank, count it." Or, in PL/I,_ DECLARE
| TEXT CHARACTER(200) VARYING; GET LIST (TEXT);
| N = 0; DO I = 1 TO LENGTH(TEXT); IF
| SUBSTR(TEXT, I, 1) = ' ' THEN N = N + 1;
| END; PUT LIST (N);
|
| _This too uses the built-in functions PL /I provides, but it
| uses them in a way that clarifies the method of solution,
| rather than obscuring it. 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?_
|
| I think this is, if anything, truer now than it was in 01978
| when the book was published, even if not many of us have to
| deal with PL/I nowadays--thanks, in significant part, to
| Kernighan's efforts. And it's probably thanks in part to
| reading this book that today I would more likely write that
| as sum(1 if c == ' ' else 0 for c in text)
|
| or sum(1 for c in text if c == ' ')
|
| or (loop for c across text if (eq c
| #\space) sum 1)
|
| rather than sum(c == ' ' for c in text)
|
| which also works.
|
| Being too clever is what almost always trips me up in Forth.
| It's not so much the stack-effect bugs or the type errors
| themselves, although of course those require more care to
| avoid than in C; it's the constant temptation to bum the code
| down to something smaller and simpler by, for example,
| keeping more crap on the stack.
|
| I think I did manage to use Forth effectively and avoid being
| so clever in, for example,
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/forth-
| assembling.html#addto....
| ddevault wrote:
| See also quotes.cat-v.org: http://quotes.cat-v.org/programming/
| vram22 wrote:
| Related:
|
| twitter.com/iamdevloper (sometimes hilarious)
|
| twitter.com/devops_borat (dead, but lots of good ones)
| devmacrile wrote:
| And the obligatory Alan Perlis epigrams (usually one makes it on
| a list like this!): http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-
| alan/quotes.html.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| "Should array indexes begin at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was
| rejected without, I thought, proper consideration"
|
| -- Stan Kelly-Bootle
| iudqnolq wrote:
| He's a fascinating guy too. I learned on hn recently he lived a
| parallel life as a mildly popular musician and football
| (soccer) manager.
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| I shouldn't but ...
|
| https://github.com/HackIT/journal/issues/383#issuecomment-80...
|
| I did
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-25 23:04 UTC)