As a (masochistic?) person who has opted for a career in computer programming/engineering, I understand the feeling of despair shared by my fellow programmers. The following miscellanious stuff is mostly stuff I found that amused me. As much as I love programming...it's a pain in the ass. I also found a lot of amusing stuff about computers in general, so now that's here too. Whoa, I just realized I'm a computer geek...


'Twas the Night Before Release Date
'Twas the night before release date and all through the house,
not a program was working, not even a browse.
The Programmers hung by their cubes in despair,
with hopes that a miracle soon would be there.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
while visions of productivity danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes did appear,
but a super programmer with a six-pack of beer.
His resume glowed with experience so rare,
he turned out great code with a bit-pusher's flair.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
and he whistled and shouted and called them by name.
On Menu, On Report, On GUI and Delete,
On Monitor, On Batch-job, On Function Complete.
His eyes were glazed over, fingers nimble and lean,
from weekends and nights spent in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
soon made it clear we had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
turning specs into code, then he turned with a jerk;
And after laying his finger upon the enter key,
the software came up and worked perfectly.
The menu's, they menued, the deletes they deleted,
the reports they reported, and the batch-jobs completed.
He tested each whistle, and tested each bell,
with nary a core dump, and all had gone well.
The software was finished, the tests were concluded.
Even the last minute requests were included.
Then the Customer exclaimed with a snarl and a taunt,
IT'S JUST WHAT WE ASKED FOR, BUT IT'S NOT WHAT WE WANT!


"640K ought be enough for anybody."
~Bill Gates, in 1981.

"C, n.:
A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like Assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't."
~Ray Simard

"Geeks have an odd sense of humor and take pride in their word manipulations -- one computer language was named just so that programmers could tell clueless adminstrative types that they were writing code 'in Glish'."
~from Digital Web 2.0, page 42, a Mage: the Ascension sourcebook.

Real programmers don't comment code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English.