Quote unquote

Fond of collecting quotes - these are related to software, which inherently lends itself to being lampooned. Thanks to stack overflow and google.

• There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who can read binary and those who cannot. – Anon
• Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. - Keith Bostic
• In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. – Anon
• If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. – Edsger Dijkstra
• A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. – Mitch Ratcliffe
• If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. – Gerald Weinberg
• Nine people can’t make a baby in a month. – Fred Brooks
• There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence. – Jeremy S. Anderson
• The gap between theory and practice is not as wide in theory as it is in practice. – Anon
• In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Another version of the above
• We have a deal with God – he doesn’t produce software and we do not produce miracles – A s/w engineer
• Why do we never have time to do it right, but always have time to do it over? — Anonymous developer
• Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray — Samuel T. Redwine, Jr.
• The three chief virtues of a programmer are: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. – Larry Wall, in the Programming Perl book
• Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. - Rick Osborne
• Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I’ll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. - Jamie Zawinski
• If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves upon execution. - Robert Sewell
• On a clear disk you can seek forever. - Anon
• The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. - Henry Petroski
• C++ : Where friends have access to your private members. - Gavin Russell Baker

Big brother and licensed software

My office comp is a repository of every possible software - freeware, shareware, pirated ones, u name it and i have it. Ergo, my hate relationship with our company's idiotic software policies and its implementing arm - TIM. Live in mortal fear of losing all the software i've collected over the ages. But that doesn't stop me from distributing stuff to the new kids on the block, u just have to ping me the software name and, if available, the folder lands up on yr desk.

The other day (which happens to be 2 weeks ago), guy lands up at my desk, no greeting, he cuts straight to the point, and that, in a thick mallu accent - u have weblogic?
me - u want it?
guy - u have weblogic?
Brevity could have been his second name. Well all kinds.
Told him - yeah dude, have weblogic - versions 7 sp4, 7 sp7, 8.1 sp4, 9.2 sp2 and 10 sp3 - which one? Yeah ok, admit I was positively gloating then, but kinda proud of my collection, and like to show off, another dumb human trait :)
guy gave a rare smile (mental note - gold cap over the molars, dad must be dubai returned) - u have weblogic. (notice its now a statement, not a ques)
By now, i seriously begin to think he's gifted with a very limited vocab. But being the friendly sort (where s/w is concerned), I nod in agreement.
guy - i want control of your pc
me - huh, wait a sec - u want weblogic, u'll get it, no one's talking about handing over the entire desktop
guy - i am TIM
I sit still for a moment, silently running thru' my 4-letter collection in a span of 5 seconds, and all the while he's smiling serenely.
me - but i need it for my local development
guy - u belong to pranoob?
me (yeah, would have found that statement positively funny and be rofl but those were grim circumstances; and btw, pranoob is a pm to whom all the kids on my floor, but me, report) - err, no
guy - then i have to uninstall
me - so why does pranoob get preferential treatment, just cos he's a fellow mallu
guy flashes the gold tooth again - pranoob good man (nodding sagely)
Yeah right, tempted to indulge in some character assassination, but my thoughts are bought back to the matter at hand by the guy who's back to parroting - i have to uninstall
me - can't this wait
chap - tomorrow audit, i have to uninstall now
know when i am beaten, this chap was one of the autobots who'd been keyed in with only one word - uninstall, and been set upon unsuspecting kinds like me. and so, it came to pass, he went thru' the pc with clockwork precision, uninstalling everything with a bea tag.

End of story. Not quite. Exactly a week later, i get a call. Impossible not to recognize the distinctive mallu accent.
I go - Hey its u? Go on (like we're long lost friends :)
he - u have Tod? (he meant TOAD)
Am in one of my rare humourous moods (had backed up all the installables onto another box, ha ha :), so retort cheekily - i wish i had Tod
But the humour is wasted.
He repeats - u have Tod?
Aah well, might as well get on with it.
I go - yeah buddy, i have Tod and Rose and MQ and ...
Can picture him rubbing his hands in glee.
Will take me a day to setup all the software back again, but heck, feels good to have made somebody's day, they don't call me magnanimous for nothing :)