Smart JokesSmart Jokes

Sayings and Puns about Computer & Software

M$: Our software of tomorrow will make sure that on your hardware of tomorrow everything will work at the usual speed.

Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my harddisk?

In the beginning was the Word. The Word is NOT a trademark of Microsoft!

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated, and all your code will serve the collective! [Variation of the BORG standard greeting]

HAL 9000 [nervous]: "Dave, put down those Windows disks!!!"


Microsofts software development department seems to be either braindead, or held hostage by bureaucracy.

The UNIX GUI is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are.

It is a feature, not a bug!

Ceterum censeo MS-DOS esse delendam — trust me, I know what I'm deleting [Latin; Translation: Furthermore, I consider that MS-DOS must be destroyed]

 

A list with 50 smart quotations providing deep insights and a lot of practical wisdom can be found here.

 

Computer Industry Acronyms

PCMCIA
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
WWW
World Wide Wait
COBOL
Completely Obsolete Business Oriented Language
MIPS
Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed
WINDOWS
Will Install Needless Data On Whole System
MICROSOFT
Most Intelligent Customers Realize Our Software Only Fools Teenagers
LISP
Lots of Infuriating & Silly Parenthesis
DOS
Defective Operating System
OS/2
Obsolete Soon 2
BASIC
Bill's Attempt to Seize Industry Control
IBM
I Blame Microsoft
SAP
Slow And Painful
BSDO
Blue Screen of Death
Google
Gradually Overcoming Our Ghastly Legal Environment
Yahoo
You Always Have Other Options

Only Good knows

/*
Dear Maintainer
When I wrote this code, only I and God  understood what it was doing.
Now, God only knows!
Once you are done trying to ‘optimize’ this routine,
and you have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
please increment the following counter as a warning
to the next guy.
  
total_hours_wasted_here = 42
   
*/

The Frog

A boy was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess."
He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful Princess, I will stay with you for one week."
The boy took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a Princess, I'll stay with you and do *anything* you want." Again the boy took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally the frog asked, "What is it? I've told you I'm a beautiful Princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do *anything* you want. Why won't you kiss me?"
The boy said, "Look, I'm a computer programmer. I don't have time for girlfriends, but a talking frog is really cool."

Beggars & Internet

Three beggars are begging in Metropolis ...

The first one wrote "beg" on his broken steel cup. After one day he had received ten bucks.

The second one wrote "beg.com" on his cup. After one day he had received hundreds of thousand of dollars. Someone even wanted to take him to NASDAQ.

The third one wrote "eBeg" on his cup. Both IBM and HP sent vice-presidents to talk to him about a strategic alliance and offered him free hardware and professional consulting. Larry Ellison claimed on CNBC that eBeg uses 95% Oracle technology. i2 announced begTradeMatrix, a b2b industry portal to offer supply chain integration in the beggar. Cisco just announced that virtually all eBeg traffic runs over their equipment.

Client/Server Computing

Companies are to Client/Server Computing as Teenagers are to Sex

1. Everybody's thinking about it.

2. Everybody thinks everyone else is doing it more than they really are.

3. Those who have done it hope it's better the second time.

Microsoft - Bugs

FOCUS Magazine Interview (1995) with Bill Gates

[…]

FOCUS
But there are bugs an any version which people would really like to have fixed.
Bill Gates
No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
FOCUS
Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to version 6.0.
Bill Gates
No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?
FOCUS
Yeah, I did ...

[…]

Here is the link to the source which also has a translation of the Focus Interview in Italiano, Español, and Japanese.

 

Quotes

The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
- Mitch Ratcliffe

Managing senior programmers is like herding cats.
- Dave Platt

A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.
The only thing more dangerous than a hardware guy with a code patch is a programmer with a soldering iron.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
- Rich Cook

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
- Edsgar W. Dijkstra

I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than eating soup with a knife.
- Shakespeare

The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense.
- Edsgar.W. Dijkstra

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.
There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.
- Alan J. Perlis

Relax! It's only 1's and 0's.
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kick-boxing.
- Matt Larson

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
- Ken Olson, President/Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

E-mail - When it absolutely, positively has to get lost at the speed of light.
- Jerry Vuoso

The only truly secure computer is one buried in concrete, with the power turned off and the network cable cut. 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.
- Western Union internal memo, 1876


The content of some parts of this web-site is a colorful potpourri collected over the years (especially the pages "project management" and "computer jokes". The various items were "quasi" found in the vastness of the Internet and the E-mail archives (this also implies that the original sources are unknown). They represent a careful and thoughtful collection, since only high-quality items were taken into consideration to join this illustrious club - from the top shelf - so to speak.