Reply to: possibly my favourite programming quote of all time

[FSM with Cheddar]

FSM your signature is out of date my old china.

Thanks.

Can't get much lower now?

[Foxy Moron]

You would've said what?

With your command of English you'd just ooze credibility!

Thanks, and you ooze personality! What's oozing is rather rancid though!

[Ruprect]

FSM your signature is out of date my old china.

[FSM with Cheddar]

Here is a great debugging technique I found on reddit linky

1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck
(bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over
some code with it, if that's all right.
3) Explain to the duck what you code is supposed to do, and then go into
detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then
realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck
will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you
on your way.

Works every time. Actually, if you don't have a rubber duck you could at
a pinch ask a fellow programmer or engineer to sit in.

[minestrone]

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.

I once worked for a company where the sales director told the whole IT staff "you lot are just expenses to me"

He got kicked out the company he founded about 5 years ago and he had to move back in with his mum and dad because his reputation was so bad he could not get a job. Shame.

[expat]

on the contrary, i'm sorted - the above just reminds me why i went freelance....

Me too: I went freelance because it cut the crap. They want a job done, they find somebody who can do it and they pay the rate.

There were fewer agents with fewer tricks in those days, though. It must be some law of nature, parasites expand to take up all available ecological niches.

[Scary]

/* You are not expected to understand this */

values of β will give rise to dom!

[Lockhouse]

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...

I remember them days - thanks.

[NickFitz]

- Amy Hoy

That's more a quote about (mis)management than about programming.

In the spirit of Fred Brooke's "Build one to throw away - you will anyway" I've long inclined towards "Build one to give to the client - you will anyway, but then you know how to do it right for your Plan A"

[Churchill]

I'd of said...
and You guys are just the human equivalent of monkeys pulling their knobs and throwing their mess at each other. Only you put a price on it.

You would've said what?

With your command of English you'd just ooze credibility!

[Foxy Moron]

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.

I'd of said...
and You guys are just the human equivalent of monkeys pulling their knobs and throwing their mess at each other. Only you put a price on it.

[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...

[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.

[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.

[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