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Ask Slashdot: What Are Some Lies Programmers Tell Themselves?
snydeq writes: "Confidence in our power over machines also makes us guilty of hoping to bend reality to our code," writes Peter Wayner, in a discussion of nine lies programmers tell themselves about their code. "Of course, many problems stem from assumptions we programmers make that simply aren't correct. They're usually sort of true some of the time, but that's not the same as being true all of the time. As Mark Twain supposedly said, 'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.'"
The nine lies Wayner mentions in his discussion include: "Questions have one answer," "Null is acceptable," "Human relationships can be codified," "'Unicode' stands for universal communication," "Numbers are accurate," "Human language is consistent," "Time is consistent," "Files are consistent," and "We're in control." Can you think of any other lies programmers tell themselves?
That they never GOTO work.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"One more compile then I'm going to bed..."
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It compiles, so it has to work. Right?
"Java is fast"
I understand the task
I have thought of all the possible test scenarios
I have coded for all possible test scenarios
The scope will not change
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"If something seems stupid to me, it is, because I am definitely smart."
Example:
"Smart pointers are stupid. I know how to manage memory, and anyone who can't have zero memory leaks directly using malloc and free shouldn't be coding anyway."