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Rafal Pienkowski
Rafal Pienkowski

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Can you share your favorite quote or rule related to IT?

I like quotes and funny rules. A good quote makes our presentation more interesting, draws attention to the presenter and makes the presentation unforgettable. Ridiculous or easy-to-remember rules help us keep in mind essential things.

Below one of my favorites:

  • Quote

    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing."
    Alan Perlis

  • Rule

    "A team shouldn't be larger than what two pizzas can feed."
    Jeff Bezos

Now it's your turn to share your quotes and rules related to IT ;)

Top comments (105)

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evanoman profile image
Evan Oman • Edited

Not restricted to IT, but anyone who has tried estimating work can relate to this:

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law

Hofstadter's Law

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Ha! That's great.

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k1pash profile image
Christopher Toman

Sadly true, I always multiply by 4, but I think I got to do power of 4

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c33s profile image
Julian • Edited

Coders are special. "We are expected to know how to do things we've never done before and estimate how long they will take."

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r3i profile image
R3i

love this!

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6ones profile image
Promise Ogbonna

❀

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dhandspikerwade profile image
Devin Handspiker-Wade

Users lie. They may not be lying about an issue, how they ran into the issue, or how the bug is affecting them but assume there's at least one lie in every bug report. It may be something completely unimportant. They have no reason to lie, but they will.

  • A past manager of mine.
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rafalpienkowski profile image
Rafal Pienkowski

This sentence reminds me Dr House's favorite saying:
Dr House

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sudiukil profile image
Quentin Sonrel

The first thing that came to my mind !

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buinauskas profile image
Evaldas Buinauskas

Status: critical.

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dhandspikerwade profile image
Devin Handspiker-Wade

"Top Priority" and hasn't responded to the ticket in a year and a half.

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cadellsinghh_25 profile image
Cadell

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, be definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian Kernighan

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leahein profile image
Leah Einhorn • Edited

Just read a similar one!

Debugging code is twice as hard as writing it, so always write code as if you're a halfwit.

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rafalpienkowski profile image
Rafal Pienkowski

It's so real.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

-Tom Cargill

There’s even a Wikipedia page about the 90-90 rule.

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tmcsquared profile image
TMcSquared

I heard somewhere that multiplying a developers time estimate by PI is very accurate most of the time.

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chris_bertrand profile image
Chris Bertrand

What's PI?

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tmcsquared profile image
TMcSquared

3.141519265358979323.....

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quii profile image
Chris James

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

The first line of the Agile Manifesto is the one that gets ignored the most.

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momennano profile image
Nano.

"Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning." - Unknown

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rafalpienkowski profile image
Rafal Pienkowski

This is very similar to

Think twice, code once.

which I've heard some time ago.

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rpalo profile image
Ryan Palo

Make it work, make it right, make it fast.
-- Kent Beck

My other favorite is this:

if you ever code something that "feels like a hack but it works," just remember that a CPU is literally a rock that we tricked into thinking
[...]
not to oversimplify: first you have to flatten the rock and put lightning inside it
-- @daisyowl

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cathodion profile image
Dustin King

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

-- Howard Cauvel

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ildoc profile image
Filippo

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a
violent psychopath who knows where you live.

John F. Woods