Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory.
[Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.
If Machiavelli were a programmer, he'd have worked for AT&T.;
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't
Until several months ago…I viewed ESOP as simply a new variation of the old “profit sharing” schemes which often had served as a bulwark against effective unionization…. The comments you (L.O. Kelso) made on 60 Minutes (March 16, 1975)…impelled me to seek additional information about two-factor theory and ESOP…. I have concluded that (ESOPs) make a helluva lot of sense, and that unions could have served their members far better than they have if they had made an effort to secure a second income for their members through negotiating employee stock ownership programs. [Business Manager, Local 5-6 Gas Workers Union July 24, 1975.]
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
All the simple programs have been written.
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult.
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
Weekends were made for programming.
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
Meanwhile, what about the workers in those state monopolies that are being put up for sale? I am reminded of a technique for employee ownership that has worked well for many U.S. companies. It goes by various names, but the best known is “Employee Stock Ownership Program,” or ESOP. [Address at the Gdansk Shipyard in Poland, quoted in the Wall Street Journal , September 17, 1990.]
Any program which runs right is obsolete.
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
Managers aren’t looking for ten- or twenty-year change programs—they want simple, objective goals: profit, growth, healthy quarterly reports, trained people, orderly markets, competitive advantage. Until these organizations face reality, give up the futile quest for control and begin to respect such concepts as workplace democracy, the need to question everything, and the search for a more balanced existence, even the most modest goals will be beyond reach.
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
Like punning, programming is a play on words.
The only way for errors to occur in a program is by being put there by the author. No other mechanisms are known. Programs can't acquire bugs by sitting around with other buggy programs.
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention
Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent. Could there be anything resembling a free enterprise economy, if wealth and property were concentrated in the hands of a few, while the great majority owned little more than the shirts on their backs? Could there be anything but widespread misery, where a privileged few controlled a nation’s wealth, while millions labored for a pittance, and millions more were desperate for want of employment? It should be clear to everyone that the nation’s steadfast policy should afford every American of working age a realistic opportunity to acquire the ownership and control of some meaningful form of property in a growing national economy. This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the “haves” and bestow upon the “have-nots”, beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare program to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant wealth-producing economy which operates in such a way that new additions to wealth accrue to those who presently have little or no ownership stake in their country. [From unpublished Reagan letter sent to New Orleans Times Picayune , based on note from John McClaughry, SeniorPolicy Advisor, Reagan Bush Committee, October 31, 1980.]
Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle?
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
In every non-trivial program there is at least one bug.
Of all the devices that have been invented to keep the status-poor in their place, putting them on the dole is by far the most effective. The size of the dole can be controlled so as to keep them always in comparative poverty, and thus unable to compete for higher status in the society; indeed, the fact of being on the dole itself leads to lessened aspiration and pride….A serious program must deal….not only (or even primarily) with pockets of economic poverty, but with the poverty of satisfaction, purpose, and dignity that affects us all. [“Keeping the Poor in Their Place,” New Republic , July 4, 1964.]
The best computer programmers never write a new program when they can use an old one for a new job.
Cobol programmers are down in the dumps.
Documentation is the castor oil of programming.
Our ultimate objective is to make programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do. We shall…say that a program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficient wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows. ― John McCarthy
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
"It's ten o'clock... Do you know where your AI programs are?" -- Peter Oakley
"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
There is a conspicuous void in the arguments and the programs of the counter-culture groups of this country, in that they have produced no well-formulated economic theories…. Unfortunately and ironically, Lou Kelso, who has some very imaginative economic proposals, has been offering them for many years to the establishment, the dinosaur culture….”Two-Factor” economics or “universal capitalism” recognizes the emerging importance of technology, and accepts the diminishing necessity of human labor; it is an economic theory that is beautifully tailored to the values and beliefs of most Catalog readers and those seeking alternatives to dinosaur existence…. These proposals have been laid on presidential candidates, congressmen, newspaper publishers, leading economists, and nearly all key decision makers of the establishment over and over again…. My advice to Lou is: “Come on, Lou, grow long hair, drop all that establishment costumery, immerse yourself in the now generation, and start to work with a constituency that wants you and needs you. [ The Whole Earth Catalog , Spring 1970.]
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always complain about and those nobody uses.
... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer
If God had a beard, he'd be a UNIX programmer.
"An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code."
If at first you don't succeed, you must be a programmer.
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program.
The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
Do you suffer painful elimination?
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.
Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
Among the mysteries which compass the world beyond, none is greater than how there can be in store for man a work more wonderful, a life more God-like than this. The Programme of Christianity, p. 62.
"Though a program be but three lines long,
"When in doubt, print 'em out."
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations.... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them "operators" or "programmers".
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you are as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time.
Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
Do you suffer painful recrimination?
If java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble.
A program whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried!
The Programme of Christianity. A New Address by Henry Drummond, to be issued uniform with the previous booklets. Price, 35 cents.
It appears that PL/I (and its dialects) is, or will be, the most widely
"You can't make a program without broken egos."
Took to typing as quickly and loudly as possible and yelling, “I’m in!” when accessing basic programs. Made me feel like a hacker.
The works of Louis O. Kelso and Patricia Hetter are an essential starting point for reading on black enterprise. The authors develop the wealth-making techniques of credit leverage as one of the most efficient and direct methods of producing affluence in a poor society. The program is brilliantly creative and specific. [ Black Capitalism: Strategy for Business in the Ghetto .]
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used.
Thus spake the master programmer:
Thus spake the master programmer:
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
If man chooses oblivion, he can go right on leaving his fate to his political leaders. If he chooses Utopia, he must initiate an enormous education program — immediately, if not sooner. [ Utopia or Oblivion. ]
"Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers."
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in
Old programmers never die, they just become managers.
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
If Machiavelli were a programmer, he'd have worked for AT
Do not simplify the design of a program if a way can be found to make
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
A computer program will always do what you tell it to, and seldom what you want it to.
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
Workers would have a deeper interest in the success of the enterprise with which they are identified if they knew they would get a share of the profits each year….Experience has shown that productivity rises substantially under such an incentive system so that the higher pay to workers is not inflationary. There are other benefits to be derived…. Any program which gives employees a share of a company’s earnings would certainly induce more cooperation towards greater profits and fewer strikes. [ U. S. News and World Report .]
"The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
Computer programs expand so as to fill the core available.
As of next Tuesday, C will be flushed in favor of COBOL.
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
"Can you program?" "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless. And then it occured to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
(Professor of Sociology, University of Notre Dame). We looked at a number of plans, but most were old and conventional, including the one [the Family Assistance Program] that was chosen by the majority. A plan to which the Commission did not give due consideration is that proposed as the Second Income Plan…. Anyone seriously interest in income maintenance programs must give the Second Income Plan thorough consideration. [Supplementary Statement to Poverty Amid Plenty: The American Paradox , Report of the President’s Commission on Income Maintenance Programs, November 12, 1969.]
"The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of
Computer programmers never die, they just get lost in the processing.
We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
The James Ramey, U.A.W. representative, said the plan was unique and preliminary reports from the union legal department indicated it was legal and permissible under income tax laws….[p]”It has great possibilities,” said John Rogers of East Lansing, a two-year employee and chairman of the bargaining committee. “I think every employee will benefit by it more than the incentive pay program. It offers better prospects in a long term way.” [Response to the proposal to adopt ESOP at the Lundberg Screw Products Co., in an article published in The State Journal, Lansing, Michigan, February 2, 1975.]
BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing.
Real Users hate Real Programmers.
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
"We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem."
Let the machine do the dirty work.
The less time planning, the more time programming.
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
[Employee participation] programs and employee ownership are important efforts to deal with powerlessness at work. 1981 interview. [Quoted in Working Together , p. 265.]
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
Algol-60 surely must be regarded as the most important programming language
We must recognize that personal freedoms diminish as the welfare state grows. The price of more and more public programs is less and less private freedom. [August 1975.
Two Kingdoms, at the present time, are known to Science-- the Inorganic and the Organic. The spiritual life does not belong to the Inorganic Kingdom, because it lives. It does not belong to the Organic Kingdom, because it is endowed with a kind of Life infinitely removed from either the vegetable or animal. Where, then, shall it be classed? We are left without an alternative. There being no Kingdom known to Science which can contain it, we must construct one. Or, rather, we must include in the programme of Science a Kingdom already constructed, but the place of which in Science has not yet been recognized. That Kingdom is the KINGDOM OF GOD. Natural Law, p. 397.
In order to stop inflation, and to promote domestic economic growth, the following three-fold program, I believe, is imperative: 1) Controls on the money supply through continuing fiscal and monetary measures. 2) A massive educational and action program designed to enlist government, labor, and management collaboration to increase productivity at both the micro- and macro-economic levels. 3) Development of “noninflationary flexible reward mechanisms” for sharing the productivity gains and profit gains with all factors of production/distribution. Well designed and communicated profit sharing programs can play a unique role in helping the United States in its present battle against inflation both as an “organizational” incentive capable of motivating everyone in the company to increase productivity and reduce costs: and as a “flexible reward mechanism” to give all factors of production/distribution the opportunity to earn “more” on a non-inflationary, as-earned, basis directly related to the enterprise’s ability-to-pay.
Machines which ape people are tending to encroach on every aspect of people's lives, and that such machines force people to behave like machines. The new electronic devices do indeed have the power to force people to "communicate" with them and with each other on the terms of the machine. Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use. The machine-like behaviour of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions
Over the shoulder supervision is more a need of the manager than the
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and
"I got a question for ya. Ya got a minute?"
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't
The day after Columbine, I was interviewed... The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that... The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song … The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous..."
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
As of next Thursday, UNIX will be flushed in favor of TOPS-10.
Another effective technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind, I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Just think of a computer as hardware you can program."
When a programming language is created that allows programmers to program in simple English, it will be discovered that programmers cannot speak English.
Old programmers never die, they just branch to a new address.
This organic conception of society, the only vital conception, combines a noble humanism with the genuine Christian spirit, and it bears the inscription from Holy Writ which St. Thomas has explained: “The work of justice shall be peace”; a text applicable to the life of a people whether it be considered in itself or in its relations with other nations. In this view love and justice are not contrasted as alternatives; they are united in a fruitful synthesis. Both radiate from the spirit of God, both have their place in the programme which defends the dignity of man; they complement, help, support, and animate each other: while justice prepares the way for love, love softens the rigour of justice and ennobles it: both raise up human life to an atmosphere in which, despite the failings, the obstacles, and the harshness which earthly life presents, a brotherly intercourse becomes possible. [Christmas Broadcast, “The Rights of Man, 1942.]
When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program
we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and the servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all. If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity.
If God had intended Man to program, we'd be born with serial I/O ports.
SCCS, the source motel! ;Programs check in and never check out!
Evolution is a million line computer program falling into place by accident.
If you cannot grok the overall structure of a program while taking a shower, e.g., with no external memory aids, you are not ready to code it.
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
Nearly every complex solution to a programming problem that I
A good programmer is someone who always looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root. Just as goodness tends to spread, the toleration of evil, which is injustice, tends to expand its baneful influence and quietly to undermine any political and social system, no matter how solid it may appear. If every action has its consequences, an evil embedded in the structures of a society has a constant potential for disintegration and death. It is evil crystallized in unjust social structures, which cannot be the basis of hope for a better future. We are far from the so-called “end of history”, since the conditions for a sustainable and peaceful development have not yet been adequately articulated and realized. [ Evangelii Gaudium , op. cit., §59, Nov. 26, 2013.]