Computers Quotes and Quotation
- "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music." --Marcus Brigstocke (falsely attributed to Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc)
- (see http://www.marcusbrigstocke.com/pacman.asp )
- (see http://www.pacmanhattan.com/ though)
- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --IBM Chairman Thomas Watson, 1943.
- "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." --Pablo Picasso
- "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." --Edsger Dijkstra
- "Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Computers are from hell."
- "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass." --Cal Keegan
- "It reminds me of the claim that Americans built the first computer... It depends on what properties are necessary for a device to be classed as a computer: That it's electronic? That it has Randomly Accessible Memory? That it operates on a stored program? I am tempted to suggest that one of the requirements implicit in some people's lists is that it was built in America."
- "A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy." --Joseph Campbell
- "How the mind works is still a mystery. We understand the hardware, but we don't have a clue about the operating system." --James Watson
- "Distributed file systems are a cruel hoax." --Zalman Stern
- "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila." --Mitch Ratcliffe
- "A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light."
- "Anti-glare screens to prevent eye strain ??? In my day, you didn't need an anti-glare screen. With the power they consumed, when you turned your computer on, the whole building darkened!" --Simon Travaglia (the B.O.F.H.).
- "Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software." --Arthur C. Clarke
- "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
- "Computers do not solve problems, they execute solutions" --Laurent Gasser
- "Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women." --Lord Kelvin
- "Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error."
- "Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it." --Seymore Cray (on virtual memory)
- "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." --Douglas Adams
- "Software Engineering is that part of Computer Science which is too difficult for the Computer Scientist." --F. L. Bauer
- "Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal if you are all thumbs." --Glaser and Way
- "Base eight is just like base ten really, if you're missing two fingers." --Tom Lehrer
- "There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary and those that don't."
- "If you torture the data enough, it will confess." --Ronald Coase
- "A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do" --Dennis M. Ritchie
- "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later" --F. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
- "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." --Weisert
- "If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime."
- "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
- "Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life." --Michael Sinz
- "Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing left to take away." --Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- "Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." --Fred Brooks
- "I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck." --Rob Pike (commenting on the X Window System)
- "Managing senior programmers is like herding cats." --Dave Platt
- "Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies." --Bill Bulko
- "If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong." --Norm Schryer
- "If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan." --Alan J. Perlis
- "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
- "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" --C.A.R. Hoare
- "/* You are not expected to understand this */" --comment in the context-switching code of the V6 Unix kernel
- "The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance" --Robert R. Coveyou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." --John von Neumann (1951)
- "Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the second law of thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases." --Norman R. Augustine
- "I mean, if 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself: 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well that would be enough immortality for me." --Edsger Dijkstra
- "Before software can be reusable it first has to be usable." --Ralph Johnson
- "They don't make bugs like Bunny anymore." --Olav Mjelde
- "To err is human, but for a real disaster you need a computer."
- "Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code."
- "Error, keyboard not found -- press F1 to continue." --BIOS system message
- "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." --Donald Knuth
- "When all else fails, read the instructions." --L. Iasellio
- "The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children." --Linus Torvalds
- "When I was a teenager, Mom said I'd go blind if I didn't quit doing *that*. Maybe she was right -- since the invention of internet porn, computer monitors keep getting bigger and bigger!" --Bill Ervin
- "You can create art and beauty with a computer." --Steven Levy
- "You know you're a geek when... You try to shoo a fly away from the monitor with your cursor. That just happened to me. It was scary." --Juuso Heimonen
- "I don't understand why cheerleaders won't talk to me. Maybe I don't throw five touchdowns against Newport High, but let's see one of those football morons program in assembly language!" --Chris Lipe
- "Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more user-friendly... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover." --Bill Gates
- "The ultimate metric that I would like to propose for user friendliness is quite simple: if this system was a person, how long would it take before you punched it in the nose?" --Tom Carey
- "NEVER EVER mess with a PCB jumper you don't understand, even if it's labelled 'SEX AND FREE BEER'." --Dave Haynie
- "You have a hardware or a software problem" --service manual for Gestetner 3240
- "Mr McKitrick, after a careful consideration I have came to the conclusion that your defence system SUCKS!" --from Wargames
- "Heuristics are bug ridden by definition -- if they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms."
- "Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code." --Dave Storer
- "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature." --Bruce Brown
- "Humans are the best value in computers -- where else can you get a non-linear computer weighing only about 160 lbs., having a billion binary decision elements, that can be mass-produced by unskilled labour?"
- "Any significant boost in technology could just as easily be a rigged demo."
- "Computers don't make mistakes. People do."
- "Software is the soul to the lifeless body of the hardware." --Ong Lee Shyh
- "I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them." --Isaac Asimov
- "Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." --Isaac Asimov
- "Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window." --Steve Wozniak
- "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." --Nathaniel Borenstein
- "Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network." --Tim Berners-Lee (in Technology Review, July 1996)
- "The disadvantage of working over networks is that you can't so easily go into someone else's office and rip their bloody heart out." --Jim McDonald
- "Trust The Computer. The Computer is your friend." --Paranoia RPG
- "I invented it, Bill made it famous." --David Bradley (wrote the code for Ctrl-Alt-Delete on the IBM PC)
- "Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?" --Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
- .HELP SEX: This system is a computer and as such is not able to help with enquiries of this nature. For details on reproduction, see the Xerox documentation.
- Famous Help text from Essex Dec 10
- Famous Help text from Essex Dec 10
- "Do what you think is interesting, do something that you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise you won't do it well anyway." --Brian Kernighan
- "Anyone who quotes me in their .sig is an idiot." --Rusty Russell
- "Always program as if the person who will be maintaining your program is a violent psychopath that knows where you live."
- "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." --Ken Olsen
- "You start coding. I'll go find out what they want." --Computer analyst to programmer
- "The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." -- Eugene Jarvis (creator of the coin-op arcade game Defender)
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