At a recent computer software engineering management course, the participants were given an awkward question to answer: "if you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, how many of you would disembark immediately?" among the ensuing forest of raised hands only one man sat motionless. when asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay aboard. with his team's software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.
The doctor, the artist and the programmer are discussing whether it is better to have wife or a lover. the doctor says:"it is better to have a wife who can stand by you all the time". the artist says:"to me it is better to have a lover. this way i get more inspiration". and the programmer says:"i have both. when i'm not with my wife she thinks i'm with my lover, when i'm not with my lover she thinks i'm with my wife so this way i can program all the time"
The software uncertainty principle : you can either know what a application is doing or how fast it is doing it - not both. you can not debug a program without affecting it.
Saying that java is nice because it works on every os is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on every gender.
Why programmers like unix: unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, fsck, fsck, umount, sleep
These two strings walk into a bar and sit down. the bartender says, "so what'll it be?" the first string says, "i think i'll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^cjfdlk jk3s d#f67howe%^u r89nvy owmc63^dz x.xvcu" "please excuse my friend," the second string says, "he isn't null-terminated."
A group of ten top software engineers is sent to a class for aspiring managers. the teacher walks in and asks this question: "you work for a software company which develops avionics (software that controls the instruments of an airplane). one day you are taking a business trip. as you get on the plane you see a plaque that says this plane is using a beta of the software your team developed. who would get off?" nine developers raised their hands. the teacher looked at the tenth and asked, "why would you stay on?" the tenth said, "if my team wrote the software, the plane would not get off the ground, much less crash."
Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. suddenly a brand new porsche screeches to a halt. the driver, a man dressed in an armani suit, cerutti shoes, ray-ban sunglasses, tag-heuer wrist-watch, and a versace tie, gets out and asks the shepherd: man: “if i can tell you how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?” the shepherd looks at the young man, and then looks at the large flock of grazing sheep and replies: shepherd: “okay.” the young man parks the car, connects his laptop to the mobile-fax, enters a nasa webster, scans the ground using his gps, opens a database and 60 excel tables filled with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150 page report on his high-tech mini-printer. he turns to the shepherd and says, man: “you have exactly 1,586 sheep here.” the shepherd cheers, shepherd: “that’s correct, you can have your sheep.” the young man makes his pick and puts it in the back of his porsche. the shepherd looks at him and asks, shepherd: “if i guess your profession, will you return my animal to me?” the young man answers; man: “yes, why not?” shepherd: "you are an it consultant." man: “how did you know?” shepherd: “very simple. first, you came here without being called. second, you charged me a fee to tell me something i already knew, and third, you don’t understand anything about my business… now can i have my dog back?"