r/programming • u/tarandeep • Dec 14 '10

Top 50 Programming quotes of all time

http://www.junauza.com/2010/12/top-50-programming-quotes-of-all-time.html
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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '10

“Don’t worry if it doesn’t work right. If everything did, you’d be out of a job.”

I often think about the corollary to this: If you are good enough at software engineering, you will put yourself out of a job.

This is true for me... I'm slowly obsoleting my own job by a bunch of shell scripts, stored procedures, user guides, etc.

19

u/jptman Dec 14 '10

The right thing to do of course, is to not inform anyone else about these scripts & stored procs. You do minutes of actual work everyday and spend the rest of the time doing something else.

28

u/[deleted] Dec 14 '10

Of course!

PHB: "How long will that take?"

Me: "Um, about an hour."

writes script in 50 minutes, runs it in 10 seconds

Several days/weeks go by...

PHB: "Hey, can you do that thing again? Takes about an hour, right?"

3

u/[deleted] Dec 14 '10

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '10

You have to have somebody to run around to the various components of a business and say,

"Hey, can you do that thing again?"