possibly my favourite programming quote of all time

[DaveB]

For those running Linux of some flavour try this

> grep -ir word /usr/src/linux

Where word is an explitive of your choice.

[BrowneIssue]

A .sig of mine:

--
When I was a programmer I used to say "The first 90% of the program
takes the first 90% of the time. The remaining 10% takes the other
90%." Now I'm a project manager, I know where the third 90% goes too.

[BrowneIssue]

One of Courtney's Laws:

There are management solutions to technical problems, but no technical solutions to management problems.

I was gutted when I came across that; I had been saying it for some years.

[BrowneIssue]

From a Usenet thread on what are the success criteria for a development project:

Make sure no blood is spilled, no lawsuits files and fairly good hygiene is kept as we accomplish our objective.

So those must be the three key parameters of project management then: blood, lawsuits and hygiene. A slight deviation from time, cost and quality. But I have to say, a project upon which your three parameters were well managed would be very preferable to one upon which they were not.

[BrowneIssue]

"If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it."

[BrowneIssue]

- Amy Hoy

As programming quotes go, it is long, boring and impossible to memorise. Here is a MUCH better one:

Share and enjoy

[deckster]

"If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read and damn near impossible to change"

Sadly, almost everybody I've ever worked with has taken this one to heart

[Board Game Geek]

As an old Sales Director used to say,

"One day, there won't be a need for you techies. If I want a program to do something, I just tell the computer and the AI will figure it out. All you guys are just the human equivalent of monkeys pulling levers."

He wasn't the most popular of chaps in the company.

[BrowneIssue]

"One day, there won't be a need for you techies. If I want a program to do something, I just tell the computer and the AI will figure it out. All you guys are just the human equivalent of monkeys pulling levers."

In my first job, at a software house, I was given an 8" disk with TLO on it. "Waddya make of that? It'll put you out of work."

It was a program generator called The Last One. It produced BASIC source code from the answers you gave it to questions.

It was utterly tulipe and required a good understanding of programming principles to use it. It was a little easier to use than to learn COBOL but far, far, far less efficient.

[BrowneIssue]

The Last One links:

Personal Computer World referred to it.

Article, Feb 1981 (ohmigod, 1981).

Another article.

A user

Given this was to put us all out of work...