In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared."
-- P. J. Plauger, Computer Language, March 1983

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- E. W. Dijkstra

Never trust a programmer in a suit.

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil."
-- Donald Knuth

With regard to adding more programmers to get a project done faster... Nine people can't make a baby in a month.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Sir
Arthur C Clarke

"type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you)"
-- Apple MPW C Compiler

"Can't cast a void type to type void (because the ANSI spec. says so, that's why)"
-- Apple MPW C Compiler

"Too many errors on one line (make fewer)"
-- Apple MPW C Compiler

Easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible
-- Larry Wall

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925

The very definition of news is "something that almost never happens." When something is so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that's when you should worry about it.
-- Bruce Schneier

"So können sie überigens auch einen Physiker erkennen: Wenn jemand über einen Faden redet und eine Blechdose anmalt ist das ein Physiker."
-- Physik-Dozent, Uni Bonn

You can have it good, fast or cheap. Pick any two

Religionskriege sind Konflikte zwischen erwachsenen Menschen, bei denen es darum geht, wer den cooleren, imaginaeren Freund hat
-- unknown (irc)

"Wer den Hafen nicht kennt, in den er segeln will, für den ist kein Wind ein günstiger."
-- Seneca

was is das motto der minensucher?
wer suchet der findet. wer drauftritt verschwindet

You know you're in trouble when# * Your dev says "I copied these statements from another developer. They're too complex to explain." * As you begin demoing strange AUT behavior to your dev, your dev drops a sharp F-bomb followed by a sigh. * You ask your dev what needs to be regression tested on account of their bug fix. They say "everything". * After a migration you see an email from dev to DBA. The DBA responds "What are these delta scripts you speak of?". * Your devs drop a prod patch at 5PM on a Friday as they all head home. * Dev says "Please try to repro the bug again, I didn't do anything to fix it#I'm just hoping it got indirectly fixed" * Dev says "I marked the bug fixed but I have no way to test it." * After a week of chasing and logging nasty intermittent bugs, you start seeing emails from your devs to your config managers saying stuff like "Why are these QA service endpoints still pointing to the old QA server?" * Your Config Manager says "Did you sanity test that patch I rolled out to prod when you were at lunch?". * Your dev says "we don't really care if the code we write is testable or not". * Your bug gets rejected with the comment "It works on my box".