Computer Programming Humor

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."                                      

DEBUGGING : Removing the needles from the haystack.

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

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Programming graphics in X is like finding sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals."
- Henry Spencer

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

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

Real programmers are surprised when the odometers in their cars don't turn from 99,999 to A0000.

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

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.

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

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

Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.

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

COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods.

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

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

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

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

Programming is an art form that fights back.

After a number of decimal places, who cares?

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

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

"It's 5:50 a.m., Do you know where your stack pointer is?"

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

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

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

Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.

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

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.

Another Glitch in the Call
(Sung to the tune of a Pink Floyd song)
-
We don't need no indirection    
We don't need no flow control  
No data typing or declarations 
Did you leave the lists alone?   
-
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.

You can't make a program without broken egos.

Email: ron@heuse.com