Computer Programming Humor

February 19th, 2008 4:12 pm

Interviewer: “Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?”

Bill Gates: “No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great
programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to
the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished
out listings of their operating system.”

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Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
– Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary

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“It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure
to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.”
-Dijkstra

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“The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a
soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.”
– _The Wizardry Compiled_ by Rick Cook

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“The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of
referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given
that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant.
This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.”
– FORTRAN manual for Xerox computers

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“C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.”
– Bjarne Stroustrup

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“Programming graphics in X is like finding sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals.”
– Henry Spencer

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“Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time.”
– David Gries, in “Compiler Construction for Digital Computers”, circa 1969.

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BASIC programmers never die, they GOSUB and don’t RETURN.

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Real programmers are surprised when the odometers in their cars don’t turn from 99,999 to 99,99A.

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FORTRAN is not a language. It’s a way of turning a multi-million
dollar mainframe into a $50 programmable scientific calculator.

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C is almost a real language. Even the name sounds like it’s gone through
an optimizing compiler. Get rid of all of those stupid brackets and we’ll talk.

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Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

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Programming is 10% science, 25% ingenuity and 65% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.

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Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.

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We don’t really understand it, so we’ll give it to the programmers.

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COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods.

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Computer interfaces and user interfaces are as different as night and 1.

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The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten 10% of its
capacity, the rest is overhead for the operating system.

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A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren’t broken.

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The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword, and usually the programmer.

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Programming is an art form that fights back.

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After a number of decimal places, who cares?

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“Virtual” means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.

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If at first you don’t succeed, you must be a programmer.

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“It’s 5:50 a.m., Do you know where your stack pointer is?”

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If God had intended humans to program, we would be born with serial I/O ports.

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There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

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You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.

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Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.

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PL/1, “the fatal disease”, belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set.

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Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear
no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together.

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Programming is a lot like sex. One mistake and you could have to support it the rest of your life.

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Another Glitch in the Call
(Sung to the tune of a Pink Floyd song)
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We don’t need no indirection
We don’t need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
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Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
–
Chorus:
All in all, it was, just a pure-LISP function call.
All in all, it was, just a pure-LISP function call.

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You can’t make a program without broken egos.