Wisdom by Troutman
17 pieces of wisdom
“Profanity is the one language understood by all programmers.”
“Not until a program has been in production for six months will the most harmful error be discovered.”
“Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order will be.”
“Interchangeable tapes won't.”
“If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.”
“If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems will malfunction.”
“Any running program is obsolete.”
“Any planned program costs more and takes longer.”
“Any useful program will have to be changed.”
“Any useless program will have to be documented.”
“The size of a program expands to fill all available memory.”
“The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.”
“The complexity of a program grows until it exceeds the capability of its maintainers.”
“Any system that relies on computer reliability is unreliable.”
“Any system that relies on human reliability is unreliable.”
“Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.”
“Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.”