Programmers Jokes

A programmer was walking along the beach when he found a lamp. Upon rubbing the lamp a genie appeared who stated "I am the most powerful genie in the world. I can grant you any wish you want, but only one wish."

The programmer pulled out a map of the Mediterranean area and said "I'd like there to be a just and last peace among the people in the middle east."

The genie responded, "Gee, I don't know. Those people have been fighting since the beginning of time. I can do just about anything, but this is beyond my limits."

The programmer then said, "Well, I am a programmer and my programs have a lot of users. Please make all the users satisfied with my programs, and let them ask sensible changes"

Genie: "Uh, let me see that map again."

All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.

They say that the new super computer knows everything. A skeptical man came and asked the computer, "Where is my father?"

The computer bleeped for a short while, and then came back with "Your father is fishing in Michigan."

The skeptical man said triumphantly, "You see? I knew this was nonsense. My father has been dead for twenty years."

"No", replied the super computer immediately. "Your mother's husband has been dead for twenty years. Your father just landed a three pound trout."

The programmer to his son: "Here, I brought you a new basketball."
"Thank you, daddy, but where is the user's guide?"

The problem with physicists is that they tend to cheat in order to get results.

The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy problems in order to get results.

The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy problems in order to get results.

A software verifier read in the Bible that God protects all fools, and decided to test it empirically. He jumped out of the window and broke a leg. There he lies, writhing in pain, and happily thinks: "I never really considered myself a fool, but I never knew I was THAT clever!"

In the beginning God created the Bit and the Byte. And from those he created the Word.
And there were two Bytes in the Word; and nothing else existed. And God separated the One from the Zero; and he saw it was good.
And God said - Let the Data be; And so it happened. And God said - Let the Data go to their proper places. And he created floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks.
And God said - Let the computers be, so there would be a place to put floppy disks and hard disks and compact disks. Thus God created computers and called them hardware.
And there was no Software yet. But God created programs; small and big... And told them - Go and multiply yourselves and fill all the Memory.
And God said - I will create the Programmer; And the Programmer will make new programs and govern over the computers and programs and Data.
And God created the Programmer; and put him at Data Center; And God showed the Programmer the Catalog Tree and said You can use all the volumes and subvolumes but DO NOT USE Windows.
And God said - It is not Good for the programmer to be alone. He took a bone from the Programmer's body and created a creature that would look up at the Programmer; and admire the Programmer; and love the things the Programmer does; And God called the creature: the User.
And the Programmer and the User were left under the naked DOS and it was Good.
But Bill was smarter than all the other creatures of God. And Bill said to the User - Did God really tell you not to run any programs?
And the User answered - God told us that we can use every program and every piece of Data but told us not to run Windows or we will die.
And Bill said to the User - How can you talk about something you did not even try. The moment you run Windows you will become equal to God. You will be able to create anything you like by a simple click of your mouse.
And the User saw that the fruits of the Windows were nicer and easier to use. And the User saw that any knowledge was useless - since Windows could replace it.
So the User installed the Windows on his computer; and said to the Programmer that it was good.
And the Programmer immediately started to look for new drivers. And God asked him - What are you looking for? And the Programmer answered - I am looking for new drivers because I can not find them in the DOS. And God said - Who told you need drivers? Did you run Windows? And the Programmer said - It was Bill who told us to !
And God said to Bill - Because of what you did you will be hated by all the creatures. And the User will always be unhappy with you. And you will always sell Windows.
And God said to the User - Because of what you did, the Windows will disappoint you and eat up all your Resources; and you will have to use lousy programs; and you will always rely on the Programmers help.
And God said to the Programmer - Because you listened to the User you will never be happy. All your programs will have errors and you will have to fix them and fix them to the end of time.
And God threw them out of the Data Center and locked the door and secured it with a password.
GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT

CIA - Computer Industry Acronyms

CD-ROM: Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN: It Still Does Nothing
SCSI: System Can't See It
MIPS: Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
DOS: Defunct Operating System
WINDOWS: Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
OS/2: Obsolete Soon, Too
PnP: Plug and Pray
APPLE: Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
IBM: I Blame Microsoft
DEC: Do Expect Cuts
MICROSOFT: Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
CA: Constant Acquisitions
COBOL: Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
LISP: Lots of Insipid and Stupid Parentheses
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs
AAAAA: American Association Against Acronym Abuse.
WYSIWYMGIYRRLAAGW: What You See Is What You Might Get If You're Really Really Lucky And All Goes Well.

Murphy's Laws of Computing

When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.

When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete.

The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.

When the going gets tough, upgrade.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.

He who laughs last probably made a back-up.

A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.

A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.

Ten Commandments for Stress Free Programming

1. Thou shalt not worry about bugs.

Bugs in your software are actually special features.

2. Thou shalt not fix abort conditions.

Your user has a better chance of winning state lottery than getting the same abort again.

3. Thou shalt not handle errors.

Error handing was meant for error prone people, neither you or your users are error prone.

4. Thou shalt not restrict users.

Don't do any editing, let the user input anything, anywhere, anytime. That is being very user friendly.

5. Thou shalt not optimize.

Your users are very thankful to get the information, they don't worry about speed and efficiency.

6. Thou shalt not provide help.

If your users can not figure out themselves how to use your software than they are too dumb to deserve the benefits of your software anyway.

7. Thou shalt not document.

Documentation only comes in handy for making future modifications. You made the software perfect the first time, it will never need modifications.

8. Thou shalt not hurry.

Only the cute and the mighty should get the program by deadline.

9. Thou shalt not revise.

Your interpretation of specs was right, you know the users' requirements better than them.

10. Thou shalt not share.

If other programmers needed some of your code, they should have written it themselves.

Real software engineers..

Real software engineers don't read dumps. They never generate them, and on the rare occasions that they come across them, they are vaguely amused.
Real software engineers don't comment their code. The identifiers are so mnemonic they don't have to.
Real software engineers don't write applications programs, they implement algorithms.
Real software engineers don't program in a language that doesn't have recursive function calls.
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
Real software engineers like C's structured constructs, but they are suspicious of it because they have heard that it lets you get "close to the machine."
Real software engineers admire PASCAL for its discipline and spartan purity, but they find it difficult to actually program in.
Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an undocumented external procedure.
Real software engineers like writing their own compilers, preferably in PROLOG.
Real software engineers regret the existence of COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC. PL/I is getting there, but it is not nearly disciplined enough; far too much built in functions.
Real software engineers aren't too happy about the existence of users. Users always seem to have the wrong idea about what the implementation and verification of algorithms is all about.

Programming Revisited

Windows 95 is a 32 bit extension for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition.

Have you heard about the new Cray super computer? It's so fast, it executes an infinite loop in 6 seconds.

If God had intended Man to program, we would be born with serial I/O ports.

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

The computer is mightier than the pen, the sword, and usually, the programmer.

The determined programmer can write a COBOL program in any language.

Every program is either trivial or it contains at least one bug.

Al-gor-ithm" means "The unscrupulous technique of continuing to count and re-count until you get the result you want." (Sent by Gary Gilmore)

Don't get sucked in by comments--only debug code.

If cars had followed the same developmental path as computers, a Rolls Royce would cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and crash once a year.

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Demo-oriented programming: A programming style, typically used by startups, focusing on the demo of the program being developed, so it will easily catch the prospective investor.

How programmers do it..

Programmers do it byte by byte.
Programmers do it with bytes and nibbles.
Programmers try to do it again and again.
Programmers do it with acronyms.
Programmers do it by computer simulation.
Programmers do it according to the specifications.
Programmers do it over and over until they get it right.
Ada programmers do it by committee.
ALGOL 68 programmers do it od.
APL programmers do it in a line.
Assembler programmers do it a bit at a time.
C++ programmers do it with class.
Fortran programmers do it with double precision.
LISP (programmers (do (it (with (parentheses))))).
Logo programmers do it for an educational experience.
Prolog programmers do it artificially.
Smalltalk programmers have more methods.
System programmers do it with interrupts.

How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

None. "We'll document it in the manual."
None. It's a hardware problem.
1.000000001.
Two. One always leaves in the middle of the project.
Four. One to design the change, one to implement it, one to document it, and one to maintain it afterwards.
Four, plus one senior analyst to manage the project, one technical writer to correct the spelling and grammar of the one who documented it, one light bulb librarian, a sales-force of at least five to drum up enough users who want to turn the light on, 274 users to burn out the new bulb, at which point we go to tender for another light bulb change,...
Five. Two to write the specification program, one to screw it in, and two to explain why the project was late.
Only one, but she's not available till the year 2000.
"The change is 90% complete."
"It's hard to say. Each time we separate the bulb into its modules to do unit testing, it stops working."
Of course, as everyone knows, just five years ago all it took was a bunch of kids in a garage in Palo Alto to change a light bulb.

How many maintenance programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They try to fix the old one.
"We looked at the light fixture and decided there's no point trying to maintain it. We're going to rewrite it from scratch. Could you wait two months?"

How many software testers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. "We just recognized darkness, fixing it is someone else's problem."

How many C++ programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
"You're still thinking procedurally! A properly designed light bulb object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class!"

How many Java programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
One, to generate a "ChangeLightBulb" event to the socket.

How many Windows programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
Seventy two. One to write WinGetLightBulbHandle, one to write WinQueryStatusLightBulb, one to write WinGetLightSwitchHandle ...

How many data base people does it take to change a light bulb?
Three: One to write the light bulb removal program, one to write the light bulb insertion program, and one to act as a light bulb administrator to make sure nobody else tries to change the light bulb at the same time.

How many IBM employees does it take to change a light bulb?
Fifteen. Five to do it, and ten to write document number GC7500439-001, Multitasking Incadescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank".

How many technical writers does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one, provided there's a programmer around to explain how to do it.

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