Humor about computers and software
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
Farmer’s Almanac, 1978
The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back.
Author Unknown
Never let a computer know you’re in a hurry.
Author Unknown
Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.
Clifford Stoll
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy.
John Pierce
Computers have lots of memory but no imagination.
Author Unknown
As network administrator I can take down the network with one keystroke. It’s just like being a doctor but without getting gooky stuff on my paws.
Scott Adams (“Dogbert”)
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
Mitch Ratcliffe
Don’t anthropomorphize computers – they hate it.
Author Unknown
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
Jeff Pesis
Spreadsheet: a kind of program that lets you sit at your desk and ask all kinds of neat “what if?” questions and generate thousands of numbers instead of actually working.
Dave Barry, Claw Your Way to the Top
Don’t explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.
Robert A. Heinlein
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
One of Murphy’s Laws of Technology
Rebooting is a wonder drug – it fixes almost everything.
Garrett Hazel, “Help Desk Blues,” 2002
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Sydney J. Harris
There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.
Author Unknown
In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would have taken many men many months to equal it.
Author Unknown
Unix was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
Doug Gwyn
1) Computers must be female. No one but the creator understands their internal logic. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else. The message “Bad command or file name” is about as informative as, “If you don’t know why I’m mad at you, then I’m certainly not going to tell you.” Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
2) Computers must be male. As soon as you commit to one you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the day.
Author Unknown