Assorted computer humor

There are 10 types of people. Those that understand binary and those that do not.

-- Ray Roton

Old programmers never die... They just decompile.

-- Peter Dick

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.

-- Edward V. Berard, "Life-Cycle Approaches"

I haven't lost my mind, I have it backed up on tape somewhere.

-- Unknown

CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh!!

-- Unknown

Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

-- Donald Knuth

Beware of programmers who carry screw drivers.

-- Leonard Brandwein

PCMCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.

-- Unknown

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

-- Rich Cook

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

-- E. W. Dijkstra

Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.

-- Jeff Pesis

The reason that no computer program can ever be a mind is simply that a computer program is only syntactical, and minds are more than syntactical. Minds are semantical, in the sense that they have more than a formal structure, they have a content.

-- John Searle, [Minds, Brains and Science]

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

-- Pablo Picasso

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

-- Isaac Asimov

If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee--that will do them in.

-- Bradley's Bromide

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.

-- Dick Brandon

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

-- Robert X. Cringely

If it's there and you can see it - it's real.
If it's not there and you can see it - it's virtual.
If it's there and you can't see it - it's transparent.
If it's not there and you can't see it - you erased it!

-- Scott Hammer

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal - if you don't use your thumbs.

-- Tom Lehrer

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

-- Janet Minor

Be warned that being an expert is more than understanding how a system is supposed to work. Expertise is gained by investigating why a system doesn't work.

-- Brian Redman

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

-- Andy Rooney

Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.

-- Michael Sinz

Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.

-- Some Computer Geek

Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.

-- Unknown

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.

-- Unknown

I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

-- Unknown

If a train station is where a train stops, what's a workstation?

-- Unknown

PROGRAM - n. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. v. tr.- To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.

-- Unknown

REAL PROGRAMMERS don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

-- Unknown

Bright young men of disheveled appearance, often with sunken glowing eyes, can be seen sitting at computer consoles, their arms tensed and waiting to fire their fingers, already poised to strike, at the buttons and keys on which their attention seems to be riveted as a gambler's on the rolling dice. When not so transfixed they often sit at tables strewn with computer printouts over which they pore like possessed students of a cabalistic text. They work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches.  If possible they sleep on cots near the printouts. Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. These are computer bums, compulsive programmers...

-- Joseph Weizenbaum

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.

-- Maurice Wilkes

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

-- Harry Weinberger

There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer.

-- J. H. Goldfuss

They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction.

-- Janet Reno

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence

-- Jean Baudrillard

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.

-- Jeff Raskin

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

-- Joseph Campbell

The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups.  Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group.

-- Lewis D. Eigen

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history -- with the possible exceptions of hand guns and tequila.

-- Mitch Ratliffe

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

-- Nathanie Borenstein

A computer won't clean up the errors in your manual of procedures.

-- Sheila M. Eby

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

-- Sidney J. Harris

As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.

-- Weisert

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

-- Wernher von Braun

Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid.

-- William M. Kelly