Funnies a.k.a. Your Slice of Geek Culture

Collected from various sources; Internet, Fidonet, tagline files, etc...

progasm: the feeling you get when your code works the first time

Abandon all hope, ye who press ENTER here.

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable:
"This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug."
Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month

Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked."
John Gall, Systemantics

"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
anon

"A slower system is better than an incorrect one."
Mark Diekhans (markd@grizzly.com)

"And remember, rebooting your brain can be tricky."
Eric Townsend (erict@flatline)

"As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications."
Dave Parnas, Communications of the ACM (33, 6 June 1990 p.636)

"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
Robert Firth

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Andy Finkel

Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee...
that will do them in.

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
Ashleigh Brilliant

"Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers."
Chip Salzenberg

Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.

Computers are the most fun you can have with anything that isn't breathing.
Bruce Walker, CACM Forum

"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
Joseph Campbell

"Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever."
Button at the Boston Computer Museum

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
G.K. Chesterton

Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.

First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack.
George Carrette (1990)

For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken

"How's YOUR Endless Project coming?"
Mark Diekhans

HOFSTADTER'S LAW:
Everything takes longer and costs more than expected, even when taking into account Hofstadter's Law.

"...and it's finished! It only has to be written."
Karl Lehenbauer

How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month

How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
One, but you can never change it back again.

I really hate this damn machine,
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.
anon

"I do not fear computers... I fear the lack of them."
Isaac Asimov

"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (circa 1948)

"If a machine can be made so that an idiot can use it, then only an idiot will use it."
Tadao Ichikawa

"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
Norm Schryer

"If you don't make money off of it, it had better be either a religious experience or a hobby."
Lance Cooper

"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."
attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory

"If your computer doesn't multitask, it ain't sh*t."
Cal Keegan

"Ignorance simplifies ANY problem."
R. Lucke

"Little else matters than to write good code."
Karl Lehenbauer

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

"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
Karl Lehenbauer

"Oh boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a REALLY BIG ram disk!"
lennox@shire.hw.stratus.com

"Reliable software must kill people reliably."
Andy Mickel

"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly' .... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover."
Attributed to Bill Gates (Microsoft, Inc. - like you don't know!)

"That's not a bug, that's merely an idiosyncracy."
mattb (formerly of sco)

"The biggest growth industry in UNIX is promoting standards."
Rikki Kirzner, Dataquest.

Real Programmers always confuse Christmas and Halloween because OCT 31 == DEC 25 !
Andrew Rutherford (andrewr@ucs.adelaide.edu.au)

"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements."
Brian Kernighan (1978)

"The most important question when any new computer architecture is introduced is 'So what?'"
someone in comp.arch

"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

"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to be maintained."
The Tao of Programming

"To program is to understand."
Kristen Nygaard

Unix: it's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there.

"Using an IBM PC is like juggling straight razors.
Using a Mac is like shaving with a bowling pin." Ted Nelson, Computer Lib

Laws of Computer Programming

1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
2. Any given program costs more and takes longer.
3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
6. The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
8. Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.

SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2

Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE:
For those who like to load their own rounds before shooting themselves in the foot.

Look at it this way: MSDOS is an overgrown program loader; the MacOS is an overgrown user interface. Neither is an operating system, but the second is better for running applications.
Paul Placeway

My computer can beat up your computer.
Karl Lehenbauer

On a clear disk you can seek forever.

PROGRAMMER: (n) Red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate objects.

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal

The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
Brian Kernighan

The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.

There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs.
Karl Lehenbauer

There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.

UNIX was never designed to keep people from doing stupid things, because that policy would also keep them from doing clever things.
Doug Gwyn (1st August 1990)

Weekends were made for programming.
Karl Lehenbauer

Quotable Rick...

• Exercise caution in your programming; for the OS is full of weirdness
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• Pre-emptive multitasking
  Seen as the cure to all the world's ills by many advocates
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• Now, I can be involved in a serious RTA and also a fire [...] but I kinda figure in that case, my data would probably be immaterial!
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• Maybe I'm totally mad
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• unfortunately secrets aren't made so I can tell them!
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• Programming is challenging, fun, not too good for your social life. The same could be said of a few bottles of Vodka, however programming is certainly likely to make your electronic life easier afterwards. That cannot be said of Vodka.
  (here, in the assembler programming area)

• Rick
  Well, we can either spend yet another day tracking down that damned redraw problem, or we could simply rip out the CD-ROM drive, fill the hole with semtex, blow the machine (and everything nearby) to smithereens, and pretend that we're sheep farmers and have never used a computer.
  Friend
  Foot and mouth?
  Rick
  Well, semtex is a bit severe for a sheep, but give those MAFF guys a while, they'll come around...
  (phone call with a friend)

• I wrote a program to emulate windows earlier. It runs as a background task, all it does is seek the first and last sectors of every partition found. Sh*t, I gotta get me a life!
  (phone call with a friend)

• You know life sucks when you figure sticking the power connector in your mouth and drooling in it as being a positive way to pass the time.
  (introduction line to one of my short stories)

• You think it is possible to hot-swap the processor?
  (asked in class; nobody knew what hot-swapping was (lusers!))

• Well, sh*t, if I'd have been using a PC this would have worked. Okay, it'd have BSODed on me and required three reboots and taken eight times longer and used forty million bytes of memory, but it would have worked.
  (phone call with a friend, while trying to data-intercept)

• If nmap figures Windows is 'trivial joke', where does that put DOS?
  (email to a friend)

• Got another damn AOL CD-ROM today. Straaaaight into the microwave, max nuke, two seconds. Consider me satiated.
  (phone call with a friend)

• Why bother to salvage parts from obsolete circuit boards when you can have much more fun with a hammer and an axe. Say, d'you think I've got unresolved issues?
  (phone call with a friend)

• Who put the toss in testosterone?
  (ewww! but a joke I made up entirely on my own, whooo-eee!)

• So all in all, when all is said and done, at the and of the day, it was about as wrong as a very wrong thing; which I hope is not indicative of the entire situation.
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager, cliché overload! [Oct '99])

• Why did it estimate 17 days? I blame excessive consumption of cherry brandy.
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager about on of my programs going awry [Oct '99])

• > Alright! Alright! I'll never, ever use full-sized images as thumbnails.
> I swear. You've made your point, guys.
 
<raises finger in the air and wiggles it>
One convert.
Who said violence didn't work?
:-)
(from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager [Oct '99])

• Talking of which, I was eating a "hot'n'spicy" noodles last night. It was so
hot it made my eyes water. Seriously, I've eaten cooler mexican food classed
as "hot".
But I persisted because I was hungry.
 
By the end, I was shovelling the stuff in (don't even try to picture it) and
my mouth felt like it was on fire, but I was thoroughly enjoying it. Pain.
Nice.
I like food that "bites". Sick of bland tasteless rubbish.
(from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager; talking about memory and getting kinda sidetracked! [Oct '99])

• > When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will have freedom! :-)
 
A fact that many politicians forget whilst they are masturbating over their
latest knee-jerk regulation.
 
(there is plenty of innuendo in there, read it twice just to be sure...)
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager; that's the entire message! [Oct '99])

• Which reminds me...
  
  <advert>
  And it can make YOU TOO look like a total ****wit. Installation is simple!
  So easy a kid could do it. Or a moron with the mental age of a spermatozoa,
  like most OE users.
  All you need to do is follow the FIVE CLICK INSTALLATION PLAN!
  
    ONE! Insert the CD, close the caddy. Nothing to click.
  
    TWO! When the window appears, CLICK ANYWHERE. That's right, we figure you
    are such an imbecile that all the options do the SAME THING. This is
    something that we call "user friendly".
  
    THREE! When the obligatory licence condition appears, click on the NEXT
    button. You won't want to read it, it contains several 'big words'.
  
    FOUR! When the "Are you sure" message appears, slit your wrists and sign
    your name on the monitor in blood to sell your soul the the devi... sorry,
    I mean MicroSoft.
     
    FIVE! When the little GO ONLINE widget appears, click it. You don't get 
    your telephone bill for another two months.
  
  SEE HOW EASY IT IS!?
  A TOTALLY MORONIC WASTE OF SPACE PIECE OF CRAP LIKE YOU CAN BE ONLINE IN
  NNNNOOOO TIME!
  Who needs AOL?
  
  </advert>
  
  
  Gee, guess I'm annoyed at the four emails I received earlier, posted with
  Outlook. I won't even consider telling you what's in them, except to say one
  was a three line note about something I already had confirmed by fax and it
  came as a 96K TIFF attachment!
  
  God I *hate* the idiots that use OE before looking in the preferences; but
  not as much as I hate the idiots who /did/ look in preferences and didn't
  alter them...

  
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager [Oct '99])

• There *are* two SSL modules available... A bootleg version which is about as stable as a coffee table with two legs missing, and the 0.97 'current' version which is okay in stability but is ten times the size of the plain ordinary HTTP fetcher.
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager [Oct '99])

• For this, you will need a telephone, the number "xxxx x95 596", the word "xyzzy", one eye of newt...
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager, on getting Argo to add a newsgroup [Oct '99])

• Which implies, to me, they've totally missed the point. I bet these people were Prestel weenies who spent around £100 a month on-line trying to get a nice logo in the SAA5050 character set...
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager, on visual layout in pseudo-HTML in a mail reader [Oct '99])

• You mean 50mA? Even that is a bit on the "fry and die" side.
  You can take tens of thousands of volts and survive. It's the current that matters.
  Example ... ever hold onto a Van DeGraff generator in physics?
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager, on what it'd take to kill you [Oct '99])

• Opinions are useful things, kinda like postal codes.
  Everybody can supply them, and everybody else can ignore them. :-)
  (from a posting in comp.sys.acorn.apps [Oct '99])

• > It is because Microsoft produces the finest computer programmes in the
  > world. This is fact.
   
  Well, I'm not sure it is actually possible to argue with somebody so retarded as to actually /believe/ that...
  (from a posting in freeserve.help.acorn [Oct '99])

• Ever had a blank refusal to accept an internal modem until you told the system that COM<number> exists? For it to then tell you that the hardware for COM<number> cannot be found, but a modem was detected?
  (from a posting in freeserve.help.acorn, following up the one quoted above [Oct '99])

• > For sake, get yourselves a PC.
   
  I did. A P75, several years ago. It's okay, it works. It is very stable and it is running Windows 95.
  Which reminds me, I'd better switch it on so the battery can get a charge.
   
  [...snip...]  
  > your neighbour is a witch
   
  Umm... Actually, she is. Gotta problem with that?
  (from a posting in comp.sys.acorn.advocacy, on how sucky Windows is [Oct '99])

• I'm not. It isn't nice. But f..k this and f..k that; it doesn't support your case much if you can't find the right f..king words to f..king express your f..king ideas, does it, f..kwit?
  (from a posting in comp.sys.acorn.advocacy, on not picking on some guy's spellings [Oct '99 - note: this is pre-"The Osbournes"!])

• The fact that a 1999 computer will run 1979 code natively is both a technical marvel, and extremely disturbing to the Karma.
  (from a posting in freeserve.help.acorn, re. the Pentium [Oct '99])

• Sod boycotting French stuff... Can we please rip out MicroSoft-infected harddiscs and smash the **** out of them with a large hammer? Or maybe place them inside an original HP LaserJet and slam the lid on them several times?
  (from a posting in argonet.acorn.voyager [Oct '99])